John Dryden (1631-1700) is one of the handful of writers who form the first rank of England's literary pantheon. His works are characterized by intellectual daring and vigor, as well as by imaginative splendor and stylish polish. In addition to his celebrated works, Dryden wrote what is arguably the greatest poem of all times about the Catholic Church -- The Hind and the Panther (1687). The result of his conversion to Catholicism, Dryden's poem honors his newfound church as the immortal Bride of the heavenly Bridegroom. Though his longest original poem, it remains the least understood of all his major works.
Reminding readers of John Dryden’s persistent use of occult rhetoric, Jack M. Armistead argues that Dryden’s otherworldliness involves more than Christian apologetics, biblical typology, or intermittent borrowings from the supernatural materials in classical literature. Rather, it manifests throughout his career in occult materials drawn from many traditions, including but going well beyond the standard classical and Christian ones. As Armistead shows, Dryden’s practice of juxtaposing pre- and post-scientific treatments of such occult topics as alchemy, astrology, and demonology pervades many of his poems and plays. In its engagement with works such as The Indian Queen, Annus Mirabilis, All for Love, and Absalom and Achitophel, among many others, Otherworldly John Dryden not only enhances our understanding of Dryden’s works, but also tracks the writer’s attitudes about Providence and the ability of the poet to perceive a hidden design in earthly events.
Dryden at the end of his life was admired, perhaps even beloved, by many in England, and his greatest skill over his long career—his controlled detachment—uniquely positioned him to write of both history and politics in 1700. His narrative poetry was popular among Whigs and Tories, women and men, Ancients and Moderns, and his imitations suggest historical connections between the War of the Roses, the Civil War, and the Revolution of 1688. All of these events combined easily in the minds of Dryden’s contemporaries, and his fables, fraught with conflicted loyalties and family strife not unlike a nation divided, may have caught and compelled his readers in a way that was different from other miscellanies: Dryden may have articulated in beautiful verse the emotions of many in the midst of enormous historical change. Fables is a pivotal cultural text urging national unity through its embrace of competing voices.
Dryden: Selected Poems is drawn from Paul Hammond and David Hopkins's remarkable five-volume The Poems of John Dryden, and includes a generous selection of his most important work. The great satires, MacFlecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel, are included in full, as are his religious poemsReligio Laici and The Hind and the Panther, along with a number of Dryden's translations from Horace, Ovid, Homer, and Chaucer. Each poem is accompanied by a headnote, which gives details of composition, publication, and reception. The first-rate annotations provide information on matters of interpretation and give details of allusions that might prove baffling to contemporary readers. Some 300 years after his death, Dryden: Selected Poems will enable new generations of readers to discover the poet of whom Eliot wrote: 'we cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden'.
This book explores ideas of enthusiasm, or divine inspiration, in the works of the poet, dramatist, and literary critic John Dryden. It offers a new view of a major seventeenth-century writer and also examines the complex political and religious tensions implicit in Dryden's interest in enthusiasm.
The written word is one of the defining elements of Christian experience. As vigorous in the 1st century as it is in the 21st, Christian literature has had a significant function in history, and teachers and students need to be reminded of this powerful literary legacy. Covering 2,000 years, The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature is the first encyclopedia devoted to Christian writers and books. In addition to an overview of the Christian literature, this two-volume set also includes 40 essays on the principal genres of Christian literature and more than 400 bio-bibliographical essays describing the principal writers and their works. These essays examine the evolution of Christian thought as reflected in the literature of every age. The companion volume also features bibliographies, an index, a timeline of Christian Literature, and a list of the greatest Christian authors. The encyclopedia will appeal not only to scholars and Christian evangelicals, but students and teachers in seminaries and theological schools, as well as to the growing body of Christian readers and bibliophiles.
Ryan J. Stark presents a spiritually sensitive, interdisciplinary, and original discussion of early modern English rhetoric. He shows specifically how experimental philosophers attempted to disenchant language
With issue twenty-four of 1650–1850, this annual enters its second quarter-century with a new publisher, a new look, a new editorial board, and a new commitment to intellectual and artistic exploration. As the diversely inventive essays in this first issue from the Bucknell University Press demonstrate, the energy and open-mindedness that made 1650–1850 a success continue to intensify. This first Bucknell issue includes a special feature that explores the use of sacred space in what was once incautiously called “the age of reason.” A suite of book reviews renews the 1650–1850 legacy of full-length and unbridled evaluation of the best in contemporary Enlightenment scholarship. These lively and informative reviews celebrate the many years that book review editor Baerbel Czennia has served 1650–1850 and also make for an able handoff to Samara Anne Cahill of Nanyang Technological University, who will edit the book review section beginning with our next volume. Most important of all, this issue serves as an invitation to scholars to offer their most creative and thoughtful work for consideration for publication in 1650–1850. About the annual journal 1650-1850 1650-1850 publishes essays and reviews from and about a wide range of academic disciplines—literature (both in English and other languages), philosophy, art history, history, religion, and science. Interdisciplinary in scope and approach, 1650-1850 emphasizes aesthetic manifestations and applications of ideas, and encourages studies that move between the arts and the sciences—between the “hard” and the “humane” disciplines. The editors encourage proposals for “special features” that bring together five to seven essays on focused themes within its historical range, from the Interregnum to the end of the first generation of Romantic writers. While also being open to more specialized or particular studies that match up with the general themes and goals of the journal, 1650-1850 is in the first instance a journal about the artful presentation of ideas that welcomes good writing from its contributors. First published in 1994, 1650-1850 is currently in its 24th volume. ISSN 1065-3112. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature looks afresh at major nondramatic texts by Donne, Marvell, Browne, Milton, and Dryden, whose digressive speakers are haunted by personal and public uncertainty. To digress in seventeenth-century England carried a range of meaning associated with deviation or departure from a course, subject, or standard. This book demonstrates that early modern writers trained in verbal contest developed richly labyrinthine voices thatcaptured the ambiguities of political occasion and aristocratic patronage while anatomizing enemies and mourning personal loss. Anne Cotterill turns current sensitivity toward the silenced voice to argue that rhetorical amplitude might suggest anxieties about speech and attack for men forced to be competitiveyet circumspect as they made their voices heard.
