SOURCE: "Rasselas and the Conversation of History," in The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, Vol. 1, edited by Paul J. Korshin, AMS Press, Inc., 1987, pp. 79-109.

In the following essay, Parke proposes that in Rasselas, Johnson elaborated on the thesis that history—as a reflection on the past and an awareness of the continuity of time—is both the antidote to life's natural boredom and a precondition for understanding the future.

The travellers who escape from the Happy Valley to make their world tour in search of the happy choice of life experience on their trip many feelings: terror, disappointment, pleasure, curiosity, suspicion, perplexity, grief, sympathy, joy. But markedly absent, and notably so both in the context of life in the Happy Valley and the subsequent motive of their escape, is the feeling of boredom. And thus their journey in this basic sense, despite its disappointments, succeeds. The...