John Dryden 1631-1700 His Politics, His Plays, and His Poets

by Rawson, Claude; Santesso, Aaron

• ISBN13: 9780874138429
• ISBN10: 0874138426
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-12-01
• Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Summary

This volume celebrates the work of John Dryden and reassesses his position in the literary tradition three hundred years after his death. Part 1, "The Court, the Town, and the Playhouse," features essays by Lawrence Manley, Harold Love, Howard Erskine-Hill, David Womersley, and Maximillian Novak that reconsider Dryden's interaction with the London of his day, and how that interaction shapes his drama. Part 2, "Dryden and the Poets," sets Dryden alongside those poets who influenced him (Virgil, Persius, Juvenal, Shakespeare), those he influenced (Pope and Swift), and contemporary poetic rivals (Milton and Marvell) in essays by Steven Zwicker, Emrys Jones, Susanna Morton Braund, Paul Hammond, Louis Martz, Annabel Patterson, Ian Higgins, Valerie Rumbold, and Barbara Everett. Together the essays form a new appreciation of the extraordinary ambition and impact on this most dynamic dramatist and poet.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	9	(15)
Claude Rawson
Part I: The Court, the Town, and the Playhouse
Dryden's London	15	(21)
Lawrence Manley
Dryden, Rochester, and the Invention of the ``Town''	36	(16)
Harold Love
Dryden's Drama: A Revaluation	52	(13)
Howard Erskine-Hill
Dryden's The Spanish Fryar: Modernity and Exclusion	65	(21)
David Womersley
John Dryden's Politics: The Rabble and Sovereignty	86	(23)
Maximillian Novak
Part II: Dryden and the Poets
Mastering Virgil	109	(14)
Steven Zwicker
Dryden's Persius	123	(16)
Emrys Jones
Safe Sex? Dryden's Translation of Juvenal's Sixth Satire	139	(19)
Susanna Morton Braund
The Janus Poet: Dryden's Critique of Shakespeare	158	(22)
Paul Hammond
Dryden's Poem of Paradise: The State Of Innocence, And Fall Of Man	180	(18)
Louis L. Martz
Dryden, Marvell, and the Painful Lesson of Laughter	198	(19)
Annabel Patterson
Dryden and Swift	217	(18)
Ian Higgins
Plotting Parallel Lives: Pope's ``A Parallel of the Characters of Mr. Dryden and Mr. Pope''	235	(28)
Valerie Rumbold
Dryden's Hamlet: The Unwritten Masterpiece	263	(16)
Barbara Everett
Appendix: The Yale Production of Marriage A-la-Mode	279	(13)
Contributors	292	(3)
Index	295