Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:25:50.437Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Personal Element in Dryden's Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Thomas H. Fujimura
Thomas H. Fujimura*
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Honolulu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although Dryden is generally regarded as a public poet concerned with public themes, in the last fifteen years of his life he turned to more private themes to justify himself and his career. We need to be aware of the autobiographical element to appreciate such poems as the “Ode to Oldham,” which is not only about a fellow writer but also about Dryden's own achievements as a satirist. The “Ode to Mrs. Killigrew,” a Catholic poem, expresses his new awareness of the art of poesy and enacts its ritualistic drama of penance for his “sins.” The epistle “To Congreve” is a cathartic expression of Dryden's bitterness as a “cast” poet and of his hopes in a beloved protege while “Alexander's Feast,” by a poet who had just triumphed over many adversities, asserts the poet's power and greatness. These poems are more meaningful if read with awareness of them as personal revelations and affirmations of Dryden the man.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 5 , October 1974 , pp. 1007 - 1023
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Note 1 in page 1022 “Literature as a Revelation of Personality,” in The Mirror and the Lamp (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), Ch. ix, pp. 226–27.

Note 2 in page 1022 See Arthur W. Hoffman, John Dryden's Imagery (Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1962), p. 148; Alan Roper, Dryden's Poetic Kingdoms (London: Routledge & Paul, 1965), p. 16.

Note 3 in page 1022 Dryden's Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1967), p. 35.

Note 4 in page 1022 E.g., Hoffman's highest praise of the poem to Congreve is that Dryden creates effective dramatic personae (p. 138).

Note 5 in page 1022 The Dramatic Works, ed. Montague Summers (London: Nonesuch, 1932), iii, 189. Hereafter cited as Summers, DW.

Note 6 in page 1022 The verses by Dryden quoted in this essay are from The Poems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958); hereafter cited as Kinsley.

Note 7 in page 1022 Hugh Macdonald, “The Attacks on John Dryden,” Essays and Studies: The English Association, 21 (1935), 4174; Charles E. Ward, The Life of John Dryden (Chapel Hill : Univ. of North Cafolina Press, 1961), pp. 175–77. Hereafter cited as Life of Dryden.

Note 8 in page 1022 I am not including The Hind and the Panther, which is intensely private but which constitutes Dryden's apologia as a Catholic.

Note 9 in page 1022 Lillian Feder, “John Dryden's Use of Classical Rhetoric,” PMLA, 69 (1954), 1258–78. Sanford Budick, in “Demythological Mode in Augustan Verse,” ELH, 37 (1970), 392–93, cites another influence on Dryden's views—the role of the herald or keryx of classical and biblical society who assumed the role of the public spokesman on matters of public concern.

Note 10 in page 1022 Cicero, De Oratore, trans. E. W. Sutton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959), I, 13–15, 23–25.

Note 11 in page 1022 Dedication of Aureng-Zebe (Summers, D W, iv, 84).

Note 12 in page 1022 “Discourse concerning . . . Satire” (Kinsley, ii, 616).

Note 13 in page 1022 See Dryden's remarks against Jesuits in Preface to Religio Laid (1682), in Kinsley, i, 307.

Note 14 in page 1022 Poems of John Oldham, ed. Bonamy Dobrée (Carbon-dale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 230–31. Por-dage was one of those who attacked Absalom and Achi-tophel.

Note 15 in page 1022 Miner suggests a date as early as July 1685 for the conversion—“The Significance of Plot in The Hind and the Panther,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 69 (1965), 454.

Note 16 in page 1022 Five Poems: 1470–1870 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948), p. 52.

Note 17 in page 1022 “On the Death of Mrs. Killigrew: The Perfecting of a Genre,” Studies in Philology, 44 (1947), 527, 523.

Note 18 in page 1022 This stress on practical piety was actually in accord with the whole trend of Christian faith in 17th-century England, which tended to identify religion with morality. See Gerald R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1950), pp. 47, 78, 129.

Note 19 in page 1022 Studies in Seventeenth-Century Poetic (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1950), p. 389, n. 17.

Note 20 in page 1022 Thomas Shadwell, Preface to The Sullen Lovers (1668), in The Complete Works, ed. Montague Summers (London : Fortune Press, 1927), I, 11 ; Preface to The Royal Shepherdess (1669), in Works, I, 100. The Friendly Vindication of Mr. Dryden from the Censure of the Rota by His Cabal of Wits (Cambridge, Eng., 1673), p. 12.

Note 21 in page 1023 Preface to An Evening's Love (1671), in Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson (London: J. M. Dent, 1962), I, 151–52. This edition hereafter cited as Watson.

Note 22 in page 1023 The bawdy passages in Amphitryon (1690) might be justified to some degree by the original source.

Note 23 in page 1023 Kinsley, iv, 1456, 1462. See also letter 69 to Elizabeth Thomas (1699), in which Dryden censured Mrs. Behn for “writing loosely” and confessed he had been “too much a Libertine” himself in most of his writing (The Letters of John Dryden, ed. Charles E. Ward, Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1942, p. 127). Hereafter cited in text as Letters.

Note 24 in page 1023 “Memoirs relating to Mr. Congreve.” in Hugh Mac-donald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), p. 54, n. 1.

Note 25 in page 1023 Dryden: Poetry and Prose, ed. David Nichol Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), pp. 1–2.

Note 26 in page 1023 Prior, Poems on Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1941), p. xx. Ward assumes a single, “most bountiful present” by Dorset rather than a continued pension (Life of Dryden, p. 362, n. 5).

Note 27 in page 1023 Hoffman is representative of the prevailing critical approach in his impersonal treatment of the poem: his highest praise is for Dryden's technique, in this instance the skill in handling tone as a means of creating various dramatic personae(pp. 133–38).

Note 28 in page 1023 Pope, in “The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace : To Augustus,” identified Dryden as Timotheus and paid tribute to his “varying verse, the full-resounding line, / The long majestic march, and energy divine” (11. 268–69); Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, iv (London: Methuen, 1939), p. 217. Of course, it might be argued that Timotheus is irresponsible, and hence is not a wholly suitable analogue for Dryden.

Note 29 in page 1023 John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky (Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), p. 412.

Note 30 in page 1023 A less amiable relation is hinted at in Dryden's remark in a letter of 3 Sept. 1697, referring to Tonson's publication of the Aeneid: “But however he has missd of his design in the Dedication: though He had prepard the Book for it: for in every figure of Eneas, he has causd him to be drawn like K. William, with a hookd Nose” (Letters, p. 93).

Note 31 in page 1023 Kinsley, in, 1424. See also letter to Mrs. Steward, 7 Nov. 1699, Letters, p. 123.

Note 32 in page 1023 Letters, p. 89. Dryden's magnificent public funeral in 1700 and his burial in Westminster Abbey between Chaucer and Cowley were the final seal of his greatness.

Note 33 in page 1023 Ernest Brennecke, Jr., “Dryden's Odes and Draghi's Music,” PMLA, 49 (1934), 31.

Note 34 in page 1023 Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George B. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), i, 388. There is an unsubstantiated story that St. John, later Lord Bolingbroke, one morning “found him in an unusual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling,” having sat up all night to complete the poem—Works of John Dryden, ed. Sir Walter Scott and George Saintsbury, i (Edinburgh: W. Paterson, 1882), 34142.

Note 35 in page 1023 Roper suggests the possible identification of Alexander and William, but rejects this as an improbable hypothesis because there is no topical equivalent for the slain Darius (p. 9). But in the Congreve poem, Edward n can be identified with James; the analogy is only partial since Edward was both deposed and killed while James was only deposed.

Note 36 in page 1023 See Dryden's remarks in his letter to Mrs. Steward, 7 Nov. 1699, in which he is critical of the Court for doing nothing to assist him: “If they will consider me as a Man, who have done my best to improve the Language, & Especially the Poetry, & will be content with my acquiescence under the present Government, & forbearing satire on it, that I can promise, because I can perform it” (Letters, p. 123).

Note 37 in page 1023 See Dryden's remarks in the account prefacing Annus Mirabilis (1667): “For I have chosen the most heroick Subject which any Poet could desire: I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the beginning, progress and successes of a most just and necessary War; in it, the care, management and prudence of our King; the conduct and valour of a Royal Admiral, and of two incomparable Generals; the invincible courage of our Captains and Sea-men, and three glorious Victories, the result of all” (Kinsley, i, 44).

Note 38 in page 1023 See James Kinsley, “Dryden and the Encomium Musicae.” Review of English Studies, NS 4 (1953), 262–67, on the doctrine of the power of music.