John Dryden

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John Dryden
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John Dryden (born August 9 . Jul / 19th August  1631 greg. In Aldwincle; † 1 May jul. / 12. May  1700 greg. In London) was an influential English poet , literary critic and playwright .

Life

Dryden was born in the rectory at Aldwincle, near Oundle, in Northamptonshire . He attended Westminster School and Trinity College in Cambridge . Although his early plays, mostly tragedies , had very different levels of success, they made Dryden and his royalist attitudes known. When he came to London after his father's death during Cromwell's reign , he tried to earn money from his family's republican contacts (his cousin was one of the judges in the case against Charles I ), but before the re-establishment of the monarchy under Charles II . not very successful. It was only his poem Astraea redux , written for the occasion, that made him widely known.

In 1662 Dryden was accepted as a Fellow in the Royal Society . In the same year he married Lady Elizabeth Howard. The poem " Annus Mirabilis ", which he wrote in 1666 in four-line pentameters , brought him fame . In 1668 he succeeded William Davenant as Poet Laureate , an office which he held until the fall of Jacob II twenty years later. For the next ten years he wrote mostly for the stage. He paved the way for restoration comedy - Marriage A-la-Mode is best known - as well as heroic tragedy and the classic tragedy in which All for Love (1677) was its greatest success. As Dryden was a master of rhyming prologues and epilogues , he often wrote them for the plays of other playwrights. He also wrote important essays on drama, the longest and arguably best being the Essay of Dramatick Poetry of 1668. In these essays he expressed his conviction that the Elizabethan playwrights surpassed those of classical Greece, and analyzed and compared the works of William Shakespeare , Ben Jonson and John Fletcher .

From around 1680 Dryden concentrated on poetry with masterful use of the rhyming couplet , where he continued to write plays and wrote some libretti . His satirical poems were most successful : the pseudo-heroic MacFlecknoe , in which he attacked Thomas Shadwell (* around 1642, † 1692), and Absalom and Achitophel , a political satire directed against the Whigs . Other important works from this creative period are the religious poems Religio Laici (1682) and The Hind and the Panther (1687). The first was written shortly before Dryden's conversion to Catholicism , the second shortly afterwards. During this period, several of his dramatic poems were set to music by Henry Purcell .

After the Glorious Revolution , Dryden lost the favor of the court because of his political convictions and had to make a living writing plays and translating Greek and Latin works. He translated works by Horace , Juvenal , Ovid , Lucretius and Theocrites , among others . The main works of this creative phase are the transcription of the complete works of Virgil (1697) and Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), a collection of translations by Homer , Ovid, Boccaccio and modernized adaptations by Geoffrey Chaucer . The preface to the fables is considered both the major work of literary criticism and one of the best English essays.

Dryden is buried in Westminster Abbey .

aftermath

Dryden's work had a major impact on English-language poetry during his lifetime and in the 18th century. His poems were used as models by, among others, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson . Johnson's remark that Dryden "refined the language, deepened the expression and retuned the melody of English poetry" characterizes the eighteenth century conception. Dryden's importance declined in the 19th century; despite the interest of personalities like TS Eliot , he is still underrated to this day. Although the brilliance of his poetry and the power of his expression are widely recognized, many believe that Dryden was "simple in disposition" and "lacked insight," as TS Eliot wrote in Homage to John Dryden . Dryden's Ode Alexander's Feast or the Power of Musick formed the template for the two-part oratorio of the same name by Georg Friedrich Händel .

Works

  • Astraea Redux (1660)
  • The Wild Gallant (1663)
  • The Rival Ladies (?)
  • The Indian Emperor (1667)
  • Annus Mirabilis (1667)
  • An Essay of Dramatick Poetry (1668)
  • Tyrannick Love (1669)
  • Marriage A-la-Mode (1672)
  • The Conquest of Granada (1670)
  • Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants (1673)
  • All for Love (1678)
  • Oedipus (1679), in collaboration with Nathaniel Lee
  • Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
  • The Medal (1682)
  • Religio Laici (1682)
  • The Hind and the Panther (1687)
  • Amphitryon (1690)
  • Don Sebastian (1690)
  • King Arthur (1691)
  • Amboyna
  • The Works of Virgil (1697)
  • Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

literature

  • The Works of John Dryden . Eds Edward Niles Hooker and HT Swedenberg, Jr. 20 vols. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1956 -
  • The Poems of John Dryden . Ed. James Kinsley. 4 vols. Oxford, 1958.
  • Eberhard Späth: Dryden as "Poeta Laureatus". Literature in the service of the monarchy (= Erlangen contributions to linguistics and art studies. Vol. 36). Hans Carl Verlag, Nuremberg 1969 (at the same time: Erlangen-Nuremberg, University, dissertation, 1968).
  • Mark Van Doren : The Poetry of John Dryden . Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York NY 1920.

Web links

Commons : John Dryden  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

The following works by Dryden are part of Project Gutenberg as e-books :

personal data
SURNAME Dryden, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English poet, playwright and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1631
PLACE OF BIRTH Oundle , Northamptonshire, England
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1700
Place of death London