Restoration Literature

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Restoration Literature

• Lesson 2 Dryden
• Dr. Marguerite Connor

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John Dryden, 1631-1700
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Sometimes Hard to Read Today

• Works are often political in nature or occasional
  pieces (written for a specific occasion).
• Also wrote for money
• poetry and plays had to meet the taste of the
  day.
• Writing is very eloquent and intellectual
• qualities not always appreciated today

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Background and Education

• son of a moderate Puritan country gentleman of
  moderate means
• First attended Westminster School
• Trinity College, Cambridge,AB.
• Stayed on at Trinity for three years after
  graduation, but did not earn a higher degree.

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Early Works/Politics

• His first important poem was Heroic Stanzas
  (1659) to commemorate Cromwell.
• Astraea Redux (1660) in honor of the Restoration
• For the rest of his life he was loyal to Charles
  and James.

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Very Important Literary Figure

• He was very much aware of the religious,
  political, philosophical and artistic trends that
  were swirling about him, and he wrote about them.
  
• His occasional poems and Astraea Redux and Annus
  Miribilis (1667) are his greatest examples of
  this.

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First Great Honor

• In 1662, he was elected to the Royal Society,
  Englands national academy of science founded by
  King Charles II in 1660.

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Marriage

• Married Lady Elizabeth Howard, 1663
• the sister of his patron, the poet and courtier,
  Sir Robert Howard
• He and Sir Robert wrote the play The Indian Queen
  together, 1664.
• By marrying a lady he married above his
  station.
• His election to the Royal Society helped make the
  marriage possible.

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Playwright

• Between 1664-81 mainly a playwright.
• Openly wrote to please people and make money
• In this respect he was very much like a
  screenplay writer today.

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Heroic Plays

• Usually wrote rhymed heroic plays
• the taste in the early part of the Restoration.
• Feature incredibly noble heroes and heroines who
  face impossible choices between love and honor or
  duty.
• All for Love (1667)
• reworking of Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra
  in blank verse and adapted to the Unities of
  time, place and action

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Father of English Criticism

• Studied the great playwright
• Greece
• Rome
• Renaissance
• French contemporaries.
• Sought sound theatrical principles on which to
  construct new drama.

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Poet Laureate

• In 1668, King Charles made him the poet laureate
• Two years later gave him the post of royal
  historiographer
• Combined income of about 200
• a good sum in those days.

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Formal Verse Satire

• Between 1678-81 at his height.
• Mock-epic satire MacFlecknoe (1678) satirizing
  the playwright Thomas Shadwell
• Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
• The Medal in 1682, a poem written in response to
  Shaftesbury getting off on charges of treason.

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Religio Laici

• Published 1682
• Title means A Laymans Religion
• Examines the grounds of his religious faith
• Defended the middle way of the Anglican Church
  against Deism and Catholicism.

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Deism

• A philosophy, not really a religion
• Often is called a natural religion
• Sought to find a standard and a guide in all the
  conflicting creeds and doctrines of the 17th
  century

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What is a Deist?

• One who believes in the existence of a God or
  supreme being but denies revealed religion,
  basing his belief on the light of nature and
  reason." (Webster)

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Lord Herbert of Cherbury

• First name of English Deism
• 1583-1648
• Codified the philosophy of Deism

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Original Five Core Beliefs

• a belief in the existence of the Deity,
• the obligation to reverence such a power,
• the identification of worship with practical
  morality,
• the obligation to repent of sin and to abandon
  it, and,
• divine recompense in this world and the next.

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Deism and Christianity

• "Five Articles" constitute the nucleus of all
  religions and of Christianity in its primitive,
  uncorrupted form.
• The variations between positive religions are
  explained as due partly
• to the allegorization of nature
• partly to self-deception,
• the workings of imagination,
• priestly guile.

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Other Deist Influence

• Particularly evident in the writings of the
  philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
• Interest in science and maths during this part of
  the century, and the reaction against the harsh
  religious wars of the earlier part of the century
  made Deism appealing to Men of Reason as they
  thought of themselves.

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Drydens Religion

• Anglican during most of his adult life
• In 1686 Dryden and his two sons converted to
  Roman Catholicism.
• Political enemies and literary rivals said he was
  being an opportunist and converting to the
  religion of the king,

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Remains Faithful

• Remained a Roman Catholic after James was
  overthrown.
• Lost his official positions under William and
  Mary in 1688 as well as all of his stipends.
• The Hind and the Panther (1687)
• debate between the pure white hind, (Roman
  Catholic faith) and the spotted panther (Anglican
  Church)

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Need for Money

• After the 1688 revolution, Dryden had to work
  hard for money until the end of his life, as was
  the situation for many writers.
• To earn his keep, he resumed writing plays and
  started doing translations of literature.

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Best Known Translations

• In 1693 he did translations of Juvenal and
  Persius
• In 1697 he published a fine translation of
  Virgil.
• In 1700, two months before his death, he
  published Fables Ancient and Modern.

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Long-lasting Influence

• Dryden had an incredible influence on English
  literature, especially through his criticism.
• He set the taste and standards in literature for
  a century
• Standards were overthrown by the Romantics, who
  still hold critical sway today.

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Neoclassicism

• Neo-classical, when used in a specific literary
  sense, refers to the theories and practices of
  most writers from the latter part of the 17th
  century through the 18th century.

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Disparate Writers

• Its a very broad description
• Includes
• Dryden
• Swift
• Pope
• Addison
• Johnson.

Joseph Addison, whom we wont be studying this
term
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Distinguishing Traits

• Admired restraint, clarity, order, balance and
  proportion.
• Applied the principle of decorum
• the idea of a rich and elevated language is the
  appropriate one for writing tragedy, but that a
  simpler language was used for comedy and other
  genres that deal with ordinary life.

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Examples

• Dryden as well as Swift and Pope would invert
  this formula, often using rich elevated language
  when writing satire.
• Examples of this are MacFlecknoe, The Ladys
  Dressing Room, and The Rape of the Lock

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Aristotles Unities

• From The Poetics
• Later codified by French and Italian writers
  during the Renaissance.
• Dryden argues that the Unities are important, but
  good drama is more important, so if one has to
  bend the rules, its permissible.

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Neo-classicism Explained

• Neoclassicists generally regarded man as a
  limited creature whose understanding was not
  adequate to an exploration of the infinite. In
  his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690),
  John Locke expressed the hope that his inquiry
  into the nature of understanding would lead the
  busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling
  with things exceeding its comprehension . Our
  business here is not to know all things, but
  those which concern our conduct.

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Definition 2

• This acceptance of human limitations and this
  emphasis on conduct, on the behaviour proper to
  men in society, was congenial to an age in which
  many of the greatest literary productions were
  satires of human pretensions. Commonly, the
  enlightened minds of the age believed that the
  orderly laws of the physical universe (as Newton
  and others were revealing them) demonstrated that
  a beneficent creator existed and that human
  affairs were to be directed toward understanding
  mans position in the physical universe and in
  the social world. As Pope wrote, The proper
  study of mankind is man.

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Definition 3

• For the writer, the proper goal, as the Roman
  poet Horace had said, to instruct and to delight.
  Through embellishments of language, the poet was
  to please his reader and thus lead him to see his
  characters as individuals who were yet general
  representations of humankind. Recognizing in the
  actions of these characters what was virtuous as
  well as what was foolish, the reader learned,
  presumably, to admire the former and avoid the
  latter.

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Definition Conclusion

• To achieve his goal, the poet had to do more than
  just trust his inspiration he had to study his
  craft, particularly as it had been practised by
  the great writers of the Classical ages of Greece
  and Rome. For in their works and in the rules
  that the best critics of the past had devised, he
  would find reflected those general laws governing
  man an the world that are the true source of
  knowledge -- in short, Nature. (Beckson and
  Ganzs Literary Terms A dictionary)

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An Essay on Dramatic Poesy

• Socratic dialogue
• We only read a small segment
• Speakers based on real people.

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Eugenius

• Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset who used the
  courtesy title Lord Buckhurst,
• Drydens patron and friend
• also a poet and court wit.

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Crites

• Sir Robert Howard, Drydens brother-in-law and
  fellow playwright
• They argued about the use of blank verse in
  drama.

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Lisideius

• Sir Charles Sedley, another poet/playwright
  associated with Court circles

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Neader

• Dryden himself

Dryden, c 1698
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Dryden on the Puritans

• Be it spoken to the honour of the English, our
  nation can never want in any age such who are
  able to dispute the empire of wit with any people
  in the universe. And though the fury of a civil
  war, and power for twenty years together of a
  barbarous race of men, enemies of all good
  learning, had buried the muses under the ruins of
  monarchy yet, with the restoration of our
  happiness, we see revived poesy lifting up its
  head, and already shaking off the rubbish which
  lay so heavy on it.

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Absalom and Achitophel

• Occasional poem linked to the trial of Anthony
  Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

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Shaftesbury background

• First been a soldier for Charles I
• Became a Parliamentarian under Cromwell.
• On the Restoration he was pardoned by Charles II
• Became an influential politician
• member of Charless infamous Cabal ministry

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Shaftesbury and Politics

• Appointed Lord Chancellor in 1672
• Did not support James to become king after his
  brother because of his Catholicism.
• Supported Charless illegitimate son, James, Duke
  of Monmouths claim to the throne
• He was brought to trial for treason in 1681.

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Final Flight

• Although he was vindicated in this trial, he fell
  from favor so dramatically that he was forced to
  flee to the Netherlands in 1682
• He died there the next year.

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Notes on Lecture

• Shaftesbury really a brilliant statesman, but his
  image has been colored by Drydens depiction.
• There is no action in the poem. The rebellion is
  stopped. So for us as readers, the portraits of
  the people involved are whats important.
• The poem glamorizes the king. It has to, really,
  and it has to gloss over some of Charless faults

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Characters

• David - Charles
• Absalom - Monmouth
• Achitophel - Shaftesbury
• Enemies - the Whig party
• Zimri - George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham

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Duke of Monmouth

• Charless oldest child and a favorite.
• Came to Court 1662, made Duke and married to
  Anne, Countess of Buccleuch
• Military commands on Continent
• Captain General, 1678

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Plot to Supplant James

• Shaftesbury, among others, tried to get Monmouth
  made heir
• Tried to have Charles legitimize him.
• Started a rumor campaign that Charles had
  actually been legally married to Lucy Walters,
  Monmouths mother.
• Charles always denied this.

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Banishment

• In 1679, Charles sent both Monmouth and the Duke
  of York (his brother James) into exile.
• At this point, he was also pretty disgusted with
  his brother for his obstinate avowal of his
  Catholic faith.

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Popular with the People

• Monmouth returned without the king's permission
• Forbidden to come to court.
• Because of anti-Catholic sentiment welcomed in
  London and the western counties.

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More Plotting

• After the arrest of Shaftesbury for treason in
  1681 he was heard to speak openly of rebellion.
• When a plot to assassinate King Charles and the
  Duke of York was discovered in 1683 and some of
  the Whig leaders were arrested, Monmouth fled to
  Holland.

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Under King James II

• June 1685, four months after Jamess ascension,
  Monmouth returned to England and raised a small
  force.
• At Taunton he was proclaimed king
• For a short time his chances for success looked
  very promising.
• Gentry failed to come to his support, and his
  army was routed by James's troops.
• Monmouth was captured and beheaded in London.

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Biblical Allusions

• See 2 Samuel 13-18
• King James Bible is the one that Dryden would
  have known.
• Really beautiful language

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The Tories

• Crown party
• Those who stood for the traditional values of
  king and country
• Dryden, Swift, Behn and Manley are some of the
  staunch Tory poets well discuss this term.
• Its also the party associated with the Anglican
  and Catholic churches, though members of these
  faiths could be Whigs.

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The Whigs

• Parliamentarian party
• associated with the ousted Puritans, but more
  with the rising mercantile middle-class
• people who have earned wealth and position though
  hard work and not birth
• though there were members of the peerage who were
  Whigs.
• Whigs tended to be less conservative,
  forward-looking and closer to what we would call
  liberal today.

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H.T. Dickinson on the Whigs

• The Whigs regarded both absolute monarchy and a
  democratic republic as inimical to that political
  and social order which they believed was natural
  and best suited to England . . .
• (cont)

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Dickinson 2

• Whiggism was opposed to all the fundamental
  tenets of the Tory theory of order namely
  absolute monarchy, divine right, indefeasible
  hereditary succession, non-resistance and passive
  obedience. Whigs recognized the need for an
  absolute and irresistible authority in the state,
  but they refused to confer such authority on a
  single magistrate.

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Dickinson 3

• since the monarch existed for the benefit of
  his subjects and not vice-versa, and since all
  governments were man-made and not specifically
  ordained by God, no ruler could claim his title
  by divine right. Rulers could govern only with
  the consent of the people.
• Dickinson, H.T. "Whiggism in the Eighteenth
  Century." The Whig Ascendancy Colloquie on
  Hanoverian England. John Cannon, ed. London
  Edward Arnold, 1981. 28-44.

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Divine Right of Kings

• This is an ancient doctrine that kings received
  their thrones from God, as you can see
  illustrated in the Bible story you read today.
  David is king of Israel because God wills it.
  The ruler, then, was answerable to no one but
  God.

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Long History

• While this idea goes back as far as the Hebrews,
  it did not come into prominence in Western
  Civilization until the Middle Ages.
• It then held sway throughout Europe until the
  changes wrought by the Enlightenment, beginning
  in the mid-17th century.

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King James I On the Divine Right of Kings (1609)

• The state of monarchy is the supremest thing
  upon earth for kings are not only God's
  lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's
  throne, but even by God himself are called gods.
  There be three principal similitudes that
  illustrate the state of monarchy one taken out
  of the word of God and the two other out of the
  grounds of policy and philosophy. In the
  Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their
  power after a certain relation compared to the
  divine power.

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More James I

• Kings are also compared to fathers of families
  for a king is truly Parens patriae, the politique
  father of his people. And lastly, kings are
  compared to the head of this microcosm of the
  body of man.
• note from me, this tied in real well with the
  strengthening of the patriarchy!

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More James I

• Kings are justly called gods, for that they
  exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power
  upon earth for if you will consider the
  attributes to God, you shall see how they agree
  in the person of a king.
• Finally he wrote First, that you do not meddle
  with the main points of government that is my
  craft . . . to meddle with that were to lesson me
  . . . I must not be taught my office.

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Conclusion of James I Quote

• Secondly, I would not have you meddle with such
  ancient rights of mine as I have received from my
  predecessors . . . . All novelties are dangerous
  as well in a politic as in a natural body. and
  therefore I would be loath to be quarreled in my
  ancient rights and possessions, for that were to
  judge me unworthy of that which my predecessors
  had and left me.

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Father to Son

• James taught this to his son and heir, of course,
  and it was the arrogance of this position which
  brought Charles I to his death.
• Charles II was aware of the doctrine, of course,
  but he proved himself a bit more flexible, though
  he indeed, did believe that he had been called to
  the throne by God.
• He also believed that if God willed it, Charles
  would have had a legitimate son, but as he
  didnt, the throne must go to his brother James,
  as that seemed to be Gods will as well.

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Tories vs. Whigs

• Tories held fast to the idea of the Divine Right
  of kings
• Whigs dont believe it.

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Structure of poem

• Lines 1-149 are an introduction to the dilemma
  and the political situation
• Lines 150-490 are the temptation of Absalom
• Lines 491-681 Achitophels men
• Lines 682-816 Drydens view of kingship
• Lines 817-932 Good guys listed
• Lines 933-end David asserts himself

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Description Very Important

• The physical descriptions of people are very
  important in this poem.
• Dryden was very interested in the connection
  between the visual arts and poetry
• Dryden being unusually visually-based in his
  descriptions, more than in any other poem

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Physiognomy

• Science which seeks links between the character
  and the body.
• These ideas are still with us today, but they
  have been discredited as science.
• But we hold on to our prejudices.