Friendships in prison: Imlac, Rasselas, the Hermit, and the Astronomer

Rasselas reflects Johnson’s recurrent interest in the world-as-prison topos, a motif that diversely shapes, for example, Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and Dante’s Divine Comedy-famous instances, and ones with which Johnson was familiar. Exploring the world-as-prison topos in his oriental fable, Johnson presents at the same time what would become his most comprehensive account of friendship, that is to say, within the scope of a single text. Rasselas is, as readers very soon perceive, an oriental fable that unfolds as a quest narrative: the best ‘choice of life’ being its titular hero’s goal. Appreciating how friendship enables Rasselas and his companions-chiefly through Imlac’s agency-to recognize the scope of their imprisonment, to make cautious sense of what their confinement might mean, and hence to move around more alertly as they seek strategies for ‘living well’, begins with appreciating Johnson’s initial sketch of a microcosmic prison: the Happy Valley.