Poeta de Tristibus; Or, The Poet's Complaint is a lengthy satirical poem by an unknoiwn author. Excerpt: "I hardly a poor Lawyer know, Unless some who are Poets too. They thrive by Rapine and Revenge, And making Enemies of Friends: Feeding on others hopes and fears, On Orphants groans, and Widows tears. In short, the World it self; and all We Trade, and Art, and Science call, Are grand Impostures; false and vain, Invented but to bring in gain."
Verbal brilliance, urbane sophistication and sexual conquest are the measures of success for the fashionable set who watched themselves being represented on the Restoration stage. Yet idealisation and satire, as this edition of Etherege's masterpiece shows, are flip sides of the same coin, and the play betrays deep anxieties about ridicule and social failure. Any London beau would emulate Dorimant, the unconscionable rake who loves 'em and leaves 'em, but he would also secretly fear that he in fact resembled Sir Fopling Flutter, the model of all Restoration fops, in his vanity and affectation. The women fare no better, being offered for identification Dorimant's discarded mistress Loveit, scheming for revenge, or the beautiful but hard-headed Harriet, who dares Dorimant to woo her in the country, for 'I know all beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you and that no gallantry can draw you farther'.
Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid contributes to our understanding of the Roman poet Ovid, the Renaissance writer Milton, and more broadly the transmission and transformation of classical traditions through history. It examines the ways in which Milton drew on Ovid's oeuvre, as well as the long tradition of reception that had begun with Ovid himself, and argues that Ovid's revision of the past, and especially his relation to Virgil, gave Renaissance writers a model for their own transformation of classical works. Throughout his career Milton thinks through and with Ovid, whose stories and figures inform his exploration of the limits and possibilities of creativity, change, and freedom. Examining this specific relation between two very individual and different authors, Kilgour also explores the forms and meaning of creative imitation. Intertextuality was not only central to the two writers' poetic practices but helped shape their visions of the world. While many critics seek to establish how Milton read Ovid, Kilgour debates the broader question of why does considering how Milton read Ovid matter? How do our readings of this relation change our understanding of both Milton and Ovid; and does it tell us about how traditions are changed and remade through time?
Published in 1975, Drydenia: On Absalom and Achitophel is a collection of poetry including A Key to... Absalom & Achitophel (Nesse); Azaria and Hushai, a Poem (Pordage); The Medal Revers’d (Pordage); The Medal of John Bayes (Shadwell); Satyr to his Muse (Shadwell); The Tory Poets: a Satyr (Anonymous); Poeta de Tristibus: or, the Poet’s Complaint (Anonymous); Directions to Fame,... (Anonymous).
