Research Essay on John Dryden 	 John Dryden was born on an unsure date in 1631 in Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire. He was born the oldest of 14 children in a landed family of modest means. His parents sided with the Parliament against he King. There is some question to whether or not he was raised in a strict Puritan environment. His father was a country gentleman of moderate fortune. He was given the opportunity by his father to be educated at Westminster School and at the University of Cambridge
John Dryden was born on August 9, 1631 in the Vicarage of Aldwinkle All Saints in Northamptonshire, England (DISCovering Authors 1). He was a cute, young boy who was described as “short, stout, and red-faced” (Britannica 8). His father was a countryman, and both his parents were very fond of Parliament siding with the Parliament Party against the King (Britannica 1). He was eleven years old when the war broke out between the royalist forces and the revolutionary forces, and that is when his life
Abridged). Dryden wrote this essay as a dramatic dialogue with four characters representing four critical positions. The four critical positions are ancients verses moderns, unities, French verses English drama, separation of tragedy and comedy verses tragicomedy and appropriateness of rhyme in drama (Brysons). Neander is in favor of the moderns but he respects the ancients, he also favors English drama while having critical views towards French drama. In “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” Dryden used character
In the history of English literature the period dating from 1660 to 1700 is called the Age of Dryden. Also called the Restoration Period, this was an era of change in political and social as well as in literary fields. In politics the period saw the reign of three rulers, two dynasties and a revolution. The social life of this period was influenced much by the French manners. The life of the people of England was greatly affected by the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666. The city
The Restoration period is also known as the Age of Dryden, because Dryden was the dominating and most representative literary figure of the Age. During the restoration, King Charles II was restored to the throne, which marked the beginning of a new epoch in English literature. The Restoration of King Charles II brought about a revolutionary change in life and literature. During this period gravity, moral earnestness and decorum in all things, which distinguished the Puritan period, were forgotten;
names. Throughout history numerous authors have sought to depict her character and their differing opinions have made her name one which resounds in very different ways. The Roman historian Plutarch created Cleopatra the political manipulator; John Dryden illustrated Cleopatra the ultimate sexual woman; George Bernard Shaw offered Cleopatra the uneducated impetuous young child-queen; and, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of Cleopatra the martyr of love. The character of Cleopatra presented by Shakespeare is
In Act III, Scene II, lines 1-167 of playwright John Dryden’s Marriage A-la-Mode (1673), Dryden reveals the true strength and wit of his character Doralice through juxtaposition of Doralice with the character Palamede in circumstances that put their strength and wit to the test. Palamede, an engaged man, had arranged to have a tryst with Doralice, a woman married to his old friend Rhodophil. The two met in a secluded grotto under the rouse of prayer. Thinking no one would come to this grotto,
As England’s Poet Laureate, John Dryden was expected to appeal to the current monarch’s best interest, and the steadiness of the Stuart dynasty was of utmost importance during the close of the 17th century. An overt propagandist for King Charles II, Dryden writes a disclaimer for his readers and acknowledges that, “he who draws his pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the other” (Damrosch 2077). The threat of instability within the institution of the British Crown became a pressing
Wordsworth, Pope and Dryden William Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” is from the Romantic Period of British literature, while Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” and John Dryden’s “Mac Flecknoe” are both from the Neoclassical Period; “The Rape of the Lock” is from the Augustan Age, while “Mac Flecknoe” is from the Restoration (“Literary”). Despite these discrepancies in the time periods that their respective works were produced, however, Wordsworth, Pope, and Dryden express similar
life was interesting from the moment of his birth. His mother was Jane Shepherd Davenant, but the identity of his true father was largely disputed (“Davenant, William” 73). Was his father John Davenant, husband to Jane, owner of the town tavern, and mayor of Oxford, or William Shakespeare, the well-known writer? John and Jane raised William Davenant together, but some people suspect that Shakespeare was actually his father. When Shakespeare was in town, he often lodged at the Crown Tavern, the inn owned
Abstract Between the characters of Octavia and Cleopatra there exists a "moral contrast" (Bree 110) -a conflict of Roman ideals and Cleopatra's foreignness. Throughout the tradition of Cleopatra, authors, including Plutarch, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Fielding, as well as filmmakers such as Mankiewicz, have separated Cleopatra from Rome and Octavia because of her combination of political power and sexuality: "The notion of Cleopatra that we have inherited identifies her primarily as being the adversary
Alexander Pope and Mary Leapor write of a common theme in their lodescriptive poems “Windsor-Forest” and “Crumble-Hall,” respectively. However, the two approach at very differently angles: Pope as if in nostalgia, remembering a place of Eden and a picturesque nature that flirts with human nature; and Leapor as if in a dream, describing what can be considered a place of wonder with vast halls and grandeur scenes. While the two poems share similarities, especially regarding the intense imagery, there
rule closed the theatre in England in 1642. But the drama retained its hold under the Cromwell government. The playwright William Davenant obtained permission to stage a play called ¡§The Siege of Rhodes¡¨ an opera* in 1656. To this opera pattern, Dryden contributed the heroic play, ¡§The Conquest of Granada¡¨. In it he cited examples of the ancient Greek writer Ariosto, with his story of love and valour (great bravery) as to his conception of the heroic play. Thus the heroic play combined some of
The task of satirist is to criticise the vices and follies of their contemporary society. However, the purpose of satire is to be universal. In this case, we are going to focus our attention on the works of two major poets of the 18th century which can be subscribed within Augustan literature: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room”. In Pope’s mock-heroic verse The Rape of the Lock (1717) what is criticised is a moral fault: mainly, immoderate female
At the age of six, Burns and his brother Gilbert were sent to John Murdoch’s School in Alloway. In 1768 Burns and his brother left the school and Burns briefly boarded as a pupil of John Murdoch at Ayrshire Grammar School in 1773. Through Murdoch’s influence, Burns read Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Dryden. However, a great deal of Burns’ education took place in his own home. He was encouraged in his self-education by his father and
The value of physical beauty in literature is often hyperbolized and used as a signifier for romance, ingenuity and moral goodness. The subversion of this trope however, gives forth a more nuanced conversation on the role of physical appearance in society and more specifically how it connects to intellect and destiny. The reinvention of the subversion of beauty to reveal its connection, or lack there of to intellect, and to a tragic fate, can be seen along four texts of different genres, generations
Hamlet: Hamlet's Sanity “Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.” Though John Dryden's quote was not made in regard to William Shakespeare's Hamlet, it relates very well to the argument of whether or not Hamlet went insane. When a character such as Hamlet is under scrutiny, it can sometimes be difficult to determine what state he is in at particular moments in the play. Nonetheless, Hamlet merely pretends to be insane so that he can calculate
is destroyed. - Dryden, p. 209 Not on your life, says Edgar A. Dryden (though not in so many words, of course) to the above in his splendid Melville's Thematics of Form. His argument is essentially to show that while most readers (erroneously) assume that Captain Vere is the story's tragic hero, the fact of the matter is that a "better" reading will reveal him as Melville's target, if you want to know the "truth." I want to emphasize at the outset is that EVERYTHING DRYDEN SAYS IS SUPPORTED
A Deconstructive Reading of Billy Budd Billy, who cannot understand ambiguity, who takes pleasant words at face value and then obliterates Claggart for suggesting that one could do otherwise, whose sudden blow is a violent denial of any discrepancy between his being and his doing, ends up radically illustrating the very discrepancy he denies. - Barbara Johnson, p. 86 With Barbara Johnson's splendid Critical Difference we are willy-nilly plunged into deconstruction. At the moment I shall not
theory. Cognitive theories are not very comfortable with explaining emotions and behavioural theories have difficulty explaining the mechanisms of improvements. It has become quite clear in the field of Psychology, and to some Psychologists like Windy Dryden (Individual Therapy) explicitly clear that there is a missing linkand that somewhere amongst the mass of theories on personality, the answer is staring them in the face. These Psychologists often practice a form of Psychology called Eclectism, which