Enchanted Ground

by Lewis, Jayne Elizabeth; Novak, Maximillian E.

• ISBN13: 9780802089403
• ISBN10: 0802089402
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-03
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

At the time of his death in 1700, John Dryden was acknowledged as England's greatest writer, his reputation even rivaling that of Shakespeare. Certainly, whether considered as a poet, a dramatist, or as a critic, Dryden far outstripped his contemporaries in the sheer scope and variety of his literary production. The amazing versatility of his pen was matched only by the transformational energy that shapes individual works, from heroic dramas to great satires. For Enchanted Ground, Jayne Lewis and Maximillian E. Novak have brought together many of the world's experts on Dryden, and their essays reflect a range of new, uniquely twenty-first-century views of him. The book is divided into two sections. The first explores Dryden's role as a public poet who had made himself the voice of the restored Stuart court. The second considers Dryden's relationship to the arts and particularly to the past and to Shakespeare. Dryden was a poet for all ages. These essays provide fresh readings of Dryden and bring scholarship on him fully up-to-date.

Author Biography

Jayne Lewis is a professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Maximillian E. Novak is a professor emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Figures	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Contributors	xi
Introduction	3	(28)
JAYNE LEWIS AND MAXIMILLIAN E. NOVAK
PART I: ENCHANTED GROUND
1 Dryden and the Consumption of History	31	(21)
MARGERY KINGSLEY
2 Dryden, Marvell, and the Design of Political Poetry	52	(18)
LEO BRAUDY
3 Dryden and Dissent	70	(21)
SHARON ACHINSTEIN
4 The Politics of Pastoral Retreat: Dryden's Poem to His Cousin	91	(20)
MICHAEL MCKEON
5 Dryden's Emergence as a Political Satirist	111	(16)
DAVID HALEY
6 The Political Economy of All for Love	127	(20)
RICHARD KROLL
7 Wit, Politics, and Religion: Dryden and Gibbon	147	(24)
SUSAN STAVES
8 How Many Religions Did John Dryden Have?	171	(14)
STEVEN ZWICKER
PART II: THE GROUNDS OF ENCHANTMENT
9 Anxious Comparisons in John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida	185	(18)
JENNIFER BRADY
10 Dryden and the Canon: Absorbing and Rejecting the Burden of the Past	203	(23)
CEDRIC D. REVERAND II
11 'Betwixt two Ages cast': Theatrical Dryden	226	(18)
DEBORAH PAYNE FISK
12 Dryden's Baroque Dramaturgy: The Case of Aureng-Zebe	244	(27)
BLAIR HOXBY
13 'The Spirituall Part': Dryden and Purcell's Baroque King Arthur	271	(16)
DIANNE DUGAW
14 Dryden's Songs	287	(28)
JAMES A. WINN
15 'Thy Lovers were all untrue': Sexual Overreaching in the Heroic Plays and Alexander's Feast	315	(22)
JAMES GRANTHAM TURNER
Index	337