John Dryden 1631-1700

Personal information

• One of fourteen children

• Attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (1664)

• Married Elizabeth Howard, 1663

• Had three sons

Dryden

• Called “the first of the moderns”

• He envisaged a new age of reasonableness and scientific progress

Dryden

He underwent a steady progression toward traditional authority:

Politically from a Whig to a Tory (under Charles II)

Religiously from Protestant to Catholic (in 1685, under James II)

Dryden

• In 1668, he was appointed the poet laureate by Charles II

• In 1688, he lost his laureateship upon the accession of Protestants William and Mary in the Glorious Revolution; wrote mostly translations after

Dryden His work expressed colloquialism in style

and secularism in point of view because: 1. He favored the idea of conversational

plainness in writing

2. He believed in the modern thought of a secular society founded upon reason

Contributions to Writing:

1. perfects the heroic couplet

2. masters the art of satirical poetry

I. Tyranny: of Aristotle

II. Emancipation: by Bacon and others, ending with Charleton

III. Consequence:

Appropriate recognition for the new “king”

definition: a short poem that makes a wise or humorous point

• the purpose of satire:

– to help a person correct his shortcomings – constructive criticism

– to keep others from committing similar errors