John Dryden

This book, with its emphasis on Dryden as a poet - as opposed simply to topical commentator or controversialist - will prove an ideal introduction for students of his work.

David Hopkins (Author)

9780521313797, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 April 1986

228 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.29 kg

Dryden has sometimes been regarded as a writer narrowly of his period, a Restoration satirist whose work is largely concerned with the personalities, debates, and tastes of his own age. In this study David Hopkins shows him to be both a man of his time and a writer for all times - a great philosophical poet, the author of penetrating and exhilarating verse of general and permanent interest about love, the natural world, and the laws of human life. Dr Hopkins also analyses the personal, commercial, political, literary, and religious influences on his writing, and discusses in detail his major poetry, prose, and drama - paying special attention to the often neglected verse translations of his old age. With its emphasis on Dryden as a poet - as opposed simply to topical commentator or controversialist - the book will prove an ideal introduction for students of his work.

Preface
Introduction
1. Dryden's verse
2. Disappointment and promise: Dryden's early career
3. Poems of controversy: Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel
4. New directions: religion and translation in the 1680s
5. 'Studying Nature's Laws': the Juvenal and Virgil
6. An improving writer to his last': the Fables
Notes' Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]