John Dryden Selected Writings

by Zwicker, Steven N.

• ISBN13: 9780198905066
• ISBN10: 0198905068
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-12-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the poetry and prose of John Dryden, the most important poet, dramatist, translator, and literary theorist of the later seventeenth century. He wrote across the tumultuous decades of political and cultural revolution--years stretching from the end of the Cromwellian Protectorate in 1659 through the reign of William III--and he addressed the crucial events of those decades. These were years of unprecedented political revolution, and of a remarkable transformation of English literary culture, with John Dryden at the literary centre. He invented new literary modes including the theatre of spectacle known as heroic drama; he perfected the heroic couplet, a form that became the chief instrument of public poetry; he adapted works of Shakespeare and Milton; he wrote excoriating satire; and he brought the translation of classical poetry to new levels of perfection; and throughout his career he wrote works of literary theory that defined his own practices and the literary ethos of his age. By the time that Dryden died in 1700 he had redefined English literary culture; his work recalled and embodied all the genres and modes of early modern literature and anticipated the brilliance of eighteenth-century satire as performed by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.

This edition represents the span of a long career in its remarkable variety. All the genres in which Dryden wrote are represented: panegyrics, lyrics, odes, epigrams, verse epistles, historical poems, commendatory verse, commemorative poems, religious poems, satires, plays, prologues and epilogues, translations, critical prose, dedications, prefaces, biography, and letters.

Explanatory notes and commentary enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Dryden, and a Chronology.

Author Biography

Steven N. Zwicker, Washington University, St. Louis

Steven Zwicker was born in California and graduated from Brown University; he is Stanley Elkin Professor of Humanities and Professor of English Emeritus at Washington University where he has directed a number of literary programmes, including the Literature and History Program; the Mellon Postdoctoral Program; and the Mellon Summer Dissertation Seminar Program. He has held visiting appointments at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, and the California Institute of Technology and was British Academy Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Liverpool and Aberdeen.

Table of Contents

IntroductionNote on the TextHeroique Stanzas (1659)Astræa Redux (1660)To the Lady Castlemaine (c.1664)Annus Mirabilis (1667)An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)Of Heroique Playes (1672)Dryden to John Wilmot, earl of Rochester (April May 1673)Marriage A-la-Mode (1673)Mac Flecknoe (c.1676)Dryden to Lord Latimer (July 1677)All for Love (1678)Absalom and Achitophel (1681)The Medall (1682)Religio Laici (1682)To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (1684)From Sylvæ (1685)PrefaceLucretius, De Rerum Natura, The Latter Part of the Third Book (Against the Fear of Death)Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , The Fourth Book (Concerning the Nature of Love)Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book the FifthHorace, Odes 1.9Horace, Odes 3.29To the Pious Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew (1686)Dryden to Sir George Etherege (February 1687)The Hind and the Panther (1687)A Song for St Cecilia s Day (1687)Lines on Milton (1688)Eleonora (1692)From The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1693)Juvenal, Satire 3The Fable of Acis, Polyphemus, and Galatea (1693)Dryden to John Dennis (March 1693)Dryden to Jacob Tonson (30 August 1693)Dryden to William Walsh (12 December 1693)To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve (1694)To Sir Godfrey Kneller (1694)Dryden to Jacob Tonson (29 October 1695)An Ode, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell (1696)The Life of Lucian (1696)From The Works of Virgil (1697)Pastoral 10Georgics 4Æneis 6Alexander s Feast (1697)Dryden to Jacob Tonson (December 1697)Lines on Tonson (c.1698)Dryden to the duchess of Ormond (Winter 1698)From Fables (1700)PrefaceTo Her Grace the Dutchess of OrmondTo My Honour'd Kinsman, John Driden, of ChestertonThe Wife of Bath Her Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury TalesDryden to Mrs Elizabeth Steward (11 April 1700)Prologue, Epilogue, and The Secular Masque for Fletcher s The Pilgrim (1700)CommentaryBiographical AppendixIndex of Titles