John Dryden as a critic

The present work deals with the claims of Dryden to be regarded as the father of practical and criticism. We discuss here Dryden as a critic. The theory of dramatic poetry as expound in “An essay of Dramatic poesy"1668 and critically assess the definition of drama .Dryden is the nature and function of poetry. He was the greatest man of letters in his age he was also greatest critic in his country.

Ø INTRODUCTION : john Dryden born on 9^th August,1631,At Aldwincle in Northamptonshire.He was educated at Westminster school under the famous headmastership of Dr.Richard Burby.His literary career can be roughly divided into three periods:

·       The dramatic period lusting till 1680.

·       The period of his greatest works going up to 1699.

·       The period of translation and miscellaneous production.

Dryden was the major literary figure both in literature and criticism of during the Restoration and later 17^th century, and the most influential critic of the whole century. Criticism during the Jacobean age and the common wealth will fail to justly appraise or even recognize the great works of the age. It is an undeveloped genre and the information about literature often consists of a “roll call” authors.

Being a writer as well as a citric, Dryden always wrote criticism to some practical end of concerning own works. Much of his own work besises,he was a professional writer. He is not a nobleman writing for his pleasure to live from his work and in the age he wrote in this meant that he had to find some Parton or other to take him under his protection. As in the critics we have studied up to now, we find in Dryden an interest the general issue of criticism rather than a close reading of particular taxes. He want to rely on both authority and common sense, and often seems at a loss when the two seem to go against each other. we call Dryden a neoclassical critic, just as Boileau,although in fact there are wide differences between them.

Dryden – The Father of English criticism

It was no less exacting a critic than Dr. Johnson who decorated Dryden with the medal of the fatherhood of English criticism. “Dryden”, he wrote, “may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition.”

Dryden evolved and articulated an impressive body of critical principles for practical literary appreciation and offered good example of descriptive criticism himself. It is said of Augustus that he found Rome brick and left it marble. Sainsbury avers that Dryden’s contribution to English poetry was the same as Augustus’ contribution to Rome. With still more justice we could say that Dryden found English literary criticism “brick” and left it “marble.”

Dryden’s critical Works:  Dryden is truly a versatile man of letter. He was a playwright ,vigorous and fluent prose writer, a great poet, a verse translator and of course, a great literary critic. His literary criticism makes a pretty sizable volume. Much of it, is informal, occasional, self-vindicating ,and, as F.R. Levis terms it in his appreciation of Dr. Johnson  as a critic in a scrutiny number, “dated” Dryden wrote only one formal critical work –the famous essay of Dramatic  Posies. The rest of his critical lives as many as twenty – five critical prefaces to his own works, and a few more prefaces to the works of his contemporaries.

After John Donne and John Milton, John Dryden was the greatest English poet of the seventeenth century. After William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson was the great playwright. And he has no peer as a writer of prose, especially literary criticism as a translator. After Shakespeare, he writes the greatest heroic play of the century. Dryden the poet is best known today as a satirist, although he wrote only two great original satires.

Among them his Essay on dramatic poesy is regarded an important landmark in history of literary criticism. He established himself as a revolutionary critic.

Dryden’s contribution

1)  Progress and modernity:    Dryden has deep faith on progress and modernity. He objects to the pettiness to the roman comic plot. He finds that roman play lacks in moral instruction in wit, in warmth of love scene. But at the sometime he admire their plot and regularly of structure. He finds fault in ancient writers, but considered them to be the best teacher of the modern.

2)   Comparative Criticism :  Dryden’s comparative criticism theory is proved revolutionary, before Dryden most of the classist had been conduct to compare modern literature with Greek and Latin, because they were regarded as a perfect model for all time. According to him the critic who accused Shakespeare for his Liberalization in using the dramatic technique had no passion to delve deep in understanding of Shakespearean style. According to him they might not have noticed that “Art is Dynamic not a Static force”

LITERARY CRITICISM

Nature of Poetry:   Dryden upholds Aristotle’s definition of poetry as a process of imitation. It imitates fact past or present, popular beliefs, superstitions & things in their ideal form. Dryden defends Shakespeare’s use of the supernatural founded on popular beliefs. For it is still an imitation though of other men’s fancies. According to him, poetry and painting are not only true imitations of nature but of the best nature a much greater criticism.

Function of poetry:  the final end of poetry, according to Dryden is delight and transport rather than instruction. To realize it, does not merely imitate life, but offers its own of it – a beautiful resemblance of the whole. The poet is neither a teacher nor a bare imitator- a photographer- but a creator. He is one who, with life or nature as his raw material, produces a new thing altogether, resembling the original in its basis but different from it in the super structure – a work of art rather than a copy.

Dramatic Poetry:  Drama claimed most of Dryden’s attention. On the introduction of unpalatable or incredible scene such as batter and death on the stage, he says that death can never be imitated to a just height and it can be avoided. He sees nothing wrong in other physical action – batter, duels and the like.

       Dryden does not subscribe to the accepted interetation the three unities; that the plot should be single, the time of action twenty four hours, and the place the same everywhere. He favors’ the weaving a sub plot into the main plot. He feels that the plot time can be increased a little more to allow for greater maturity of the plot. In the same way, the unity of place cannot be maintained as the time taken by the event of the play determines the location of the scene and the unity of place can be waived. Dryden considers the unites of time and place too rigorous and they leave little scope for the development of plot and character.

Tragedy:  Dryden’s definition of tragedy is the same as Aristotle’s: an imitation of one entire, great and probable action not told but represented, which by moving in us fear and pity is conducting to the purging of those two emotions in our minds. Dryden merely follows Aristotle and Horace in his remark on the tragic hero and other characters called “chorus” in the Greek Tragedy.

Comedy:   Dryden has not much of his own to say on comedy. Following Aristotle, he call it a representation of human life in inferior person and law subjects. To the question whether comedy delights or instructs, Dryden say that the first end of comedy is delight and instruction only the second. The person in comedy are of a lower quality, the action is little and faults and vices are but the sallies of youth and frailties of human nature; they are not premeditated crimes. Dryden wanted English comedy to be more refined than it was. According to him, Ben Jones had only specialized in ‘humor’ and what it lacked was ‘wit’.

Epic:   Dryden is with the French critic in considering the epic superior to the tragedy. He asks ‘what virtue is there in a tragedy which is not contained in an epic poem. He stresses that the epic is certainly the greatest work of human nature. Dryden disagrees with Aristotle again in insisting on a moral in the epic.

Satire:  in the first instance, the satire must have unity of design, confining itself for that purpose to one subject or principally one. In other word, the satire should choose one vice or folly for his target, as the epic poet choose one character for his special praise and make all others subservient to it as the epic poet does the other characters, in the same way.

The value of criticism:  Dryden’s criticism is partly a restatement of the precepts of Aristotle, partly a plea for French neo-classicism and partly a deviation from both under the influence of Longinus and saint Evremond. From Aristotle he learnt a respect for rules. French neo-classicism taught him to prefer the epic to tragedy, to insist on a moral in it and many of the things. And to Longinus and saint Evremond he owed a respect for his own judgment.

    Dryden is a liberal classicist, who would adjust the rules of the ancients to the genius of the age, to which a poet writes.

     

 

character anylisis gulliver travels

Ø Introduction:  johndhan was born swift was born to lawyer in Dublin 1667 and attended Trinity college. He went on be a politician secretry,a county person, chaplain all of which provided material for his satires about the political and religious corruption of his society. During his brief time in England, swift Alexander pope, and others formed the scribblers club resolving to write books satirizing modern knowledge.

Ø Gulliver’s Travels characters

·       Lemual Gulliver: A married English surgeon, Gulliver wants nothing to do with domestic life and leave England have adventures in far off lands. he was resourceful, open minded ,adamant about his own truthfulness and remarkably fast learner of new languages. Though Gulliver is gland return to England after his three adventures in Lilliput.

Lemual Gulliver was star and central character of Gulliver travels .he narrates the novel himself, and he was the only genuinely developed character in the whole book.gulliver mentions his wife, mary,in passing as he stays home just long enough to get her pregnant again before high seas. Gulliver is pretty much it when comes to rounded, individual character in this novel. Gulliver is the son of a middle class family in Nottinghamshire, England.

He was studied medicine both in England and the University of Leaden in Holland. Both of these traits come in handy. First Gulliver’s medium class birth means that he is pretty flexible in terms of the social circles he moves in. he always wants to associate himself with “people of Quality”

He also falls relatively easily into conversation with working class people and servants. He really seem to be a kind of Everyman, maybe more resourceful than many but not too brave or powerful.

Second, Gulliver’s interested in languages and customs is the primary engine for his travels. He is good at adapting himself to other cultures. He take a genuine interest in human which makes him the perfect narrator a novel about human nature.

So Gulliver has a genuine interest in people at beginning of the novel. But it sure does not last and by the end of the novel, he is totally over it. The novel about what wretched wastes of space we humans are, it makes sense that the only logical conclusion the end of part elf to other cultures. He takes a genuine interest in human which makes him the perfect narrator a novel about human nature.

So Gulliver has a genuine interest in people at beginning of the novel. But it sure does not last and by the end of the novel, he is totally over it. The novel about what wretched wastes of space we humans are, it makes sense that the only logical conclusion the end of part 4, Gulliver has gone from being a pretty open, flexible kind of guy to being a crazed shut in who can’t stand the smell of his own wife and kids.

·       MARY BURTON: Gulliver marries Mary Burton in the first chapter of his travels, but he never exactly spends a lot of time with herein fact even though she expressly asks him not to go back sea the end of part of 3 ,he was ,leaving again part 4.gulliver’s return from Houyhnhnm land that he resolves to stay home but not because he’s filled with a strong sense of family. the small and appearance of human seems revolting to him. Mary has borne him children has added to the overall human population is utterly revolting to him.

              

·       Mr. JAMES BATES : As with the all characters in Gulliver ‘s Travels expect for the title character,

MR.JAMES BATES exists mainly as a name, without any particularly distinctive traits. Gulliver won’t stop referring to the guy as his “master bates”.

·      Richard sympson:  Richard sympson is Gulliver’s cousin and he is editor of travels. Gulliver strongly resent sympson’s edits.

·      The Lilliputians: the inhabitants of Lilliput, the Lilliputians are just a few inches tall. They are engaged in extended battles with their neighbors, the blefuscans.

·      The Lilliputian king : king of Lilliput, the Lilliput king is initially welcoming, friendly and generous with Gulliver but he grows petulant, vengeful and cold after Gulliver won’t help him enslave the Blefuscians. and many others.

What is Gulliver’s Travels About And Why Should I Care?

When we first start seeing ads for director James Cameron’s CGL extravaganza Avatar, we were like, warrior smurfs? But now that we have seen it, whoa, are we impressed. It is not just the beautiful visual material that kept us riveted to our seats. We were also fascinated by the whole idea of the a vatars: when wheelchair-bound Jakes sully gets to walk, run, and jump using his new better body ? it was as though we were running and jumping for the first time in who knows how long. We take a lot of things for granted in our daily lives. The great thing about science fiction or fantasy is that it can take totally familiar aspects of human experience and show them to us again in a fresh light. Avatar makes basic and running –seem new and remarkable.

But you may be saying to your selves, what does Avatar have to do with Gulliver’s travels? Well, James Cameron is drawing on a long fantasy tradition of bending reality to make ordinary things seem strange and unfamiliar. And Gulliver’s Travels is one of the granddaddies of this genre. Swift take regular topic like political, international relations, math and science, even old age twists them. He makes political differences seem tiny by sending Gulliver to Lilliput and he makes math and science seem airy and far from daily life by floating the island of Laputa overhead. By depicting human customs we take for granted as weird and alien, Gulliver’s we take for granted as weird and alien, Gulliver’s Travels is asking us to look at them again as though for the first time.

But what Gulliver uncovers during his travels is nowhere near as lovely as James Cameron’s Pandora. He finds nearly everything about people- their desires, their interests , even their smell- totally repulsive. Gulliver’s Travels reflects human being back to us in all kinds of creatively disgusting ways. This is a book to read when you are feeling mad at people in general .

Gulliver embarks on four separate voyages in Gulliver’s Travels. There is a storm before every journey. All the four voyages add new perspectives to Gulliver’s life and also give him new opportunities for satirizing the ways of England.

In the first voyage, Gulliver travels to Lilliput, where he is huge and the Lilliputians are small. Initially, the Lilliputians look amiable but the reader soon understands that they are very ridiculers and petty creatures. For “making water” Gulliver gets convicted of treason in the capital –among other “crimes.”

In the second voyage, Gulliver travels to Brobdingnag, which is a land of Giants and he is as small as the Lilliputians were to him. so, naturally, Gulliver is scared but his keepers are surprisingly gentle. He gets humiliated by the king when he is forced to see the difference between how England is and how it ought to be. Gulliver soon understand that he must have been very revolting to the Lilliputians.

In the third voyage, Gulliver travels to Laputa. When he visits the island of Glubdugdribb, he gets the power to call up the death of history. In the land of laputa . the people are over- thinkers and are outrageous in many ways. He also meets the stuldbrugs there, which is basically a race that is blessed with immortality. But Gulliver finds out that they are miserable.

In the fourth voyage, gulliver travels to the land of Houynhnms,  who are horses gifted with a reason. Their coherent, clean, and trouble –free society is contrasted with the foulness and brutality of the yahoos, who are beats in human shape. Gulliver manages to unwillingly come to recognize their human vices. He ends up staying with the Houyhnhnms for many years and gets totally captivated with them to a point that he never wants to leave. when he gets to know that the time has come for him to leave the island. He faints from unhappiness, when he returns to England, Gulliver feels appalled about other humans, including his own family.

Jonathan swift Gulliver’s Travels is an adventure story involving several voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, who because of a series of mishaps enroots to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown island living with people and animals of unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experience and then set out again on a new voyage.

Conclusion:  The conclusion of Gulliver’s Travels raises        enough issue to deserve being treated separately from the rest of the fourth voyage. A section that includes chapter and a letter from Capt. Gulliver to his cousin sympson, the conclusion is a disturbingly unsettled narrative, filtering experience through Gulliver ‘s increasingly exacerbated vision. From the moment he becomes attached to the Houyhnhnms, there seems to be no complacent, unknowing self. Yet his attachment to his memories gives Gulliver’s character a degree of moral and psychological ambiguity that is not evident earlier in the voyages. Gulliver is unable to reconcile himself to his wife, family, friends or country, but it is impossible to say with certainly whether his misanthropy is the outcome of idealism or wounded pride. The former quality is apparent in his eloquent attack on European imperialism. The latter in the histrionic exaggeration of his claims for the moral efficacy of his travels.

          

Dr.faustus tragedy

Name:  Rathod nirali

Roll No: 33

Paper no : Renaissance literature

Topic : Dr. Faustus as a Tragedy

Enrolment no: 2069108420190039

Email’ Id : niralijrathod@gmail.com

Submitted to : smt.SB.Gardi department of  English

Introduction:  Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus portrays the titular character on a pursuit of knowledge that ultimately leads his downfall. Faustus makes an error of judgment in making a pact with Lucifer, which brings about not only his death but the to damnation of his soul.

The Tragical history of his life and death of doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus is Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher marlow,based on German story .

The title character faust,that was written sometime between 1589 and 1592, and night have been performed between 1592 and Marlow’s death in 1593.two different versions of the play were published in Jacobean era, several Jeers later.

Introduction of the Author  : 

                                                     Christopher Marlow also known as kit Marlow. Marlow has born in 26 Feb, 1564, Canterbury Kent, England. He was an English playwright poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlow region of Elizabeth .

His father john Marlow was a shoemaker and the family must have been quite well because Christopher was sent to kings school. When Christopher Marlowe was born Canterbury probably had a population of over 4,000. It would seen no more than a village but by Elizabethan standards it was a respectable.

In the 16^th century England the renaissance. The cultural movement that revived interest in classical art and literature reached England.

However England is deeply divided in the 16^th century. Introduced a moderate Protestantism.

What is tragedy:

                                          “ A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself, in language with pleasurable access sories,each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; within cadets arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.” By Aristotle….

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audience. Many culture have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama has played unique and important role historically in the self definition of western civilization.

Dr Faustus as a tragedy  

                                         Tragedy is defined as a drama and literary thing in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers sorrow especially as a consequence of tragic flaw, moral weakness or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances. In this play “DOCTOR FAUSTUS” Marlowe present his main character as a tragic hero.

Understanding of Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan tragedy, Dr Faustus , can be framed in term of the renaissance philosophy and the Elizabethan  tragedy ,which take a different turn some points from the Aristotelian tragedy, for instance death of the tragic hero. Dr. Faustus demonstrates the renaissance philosophy that pits the dichotomy of good angelic humanity against evil. Marlowe’s play is a model of the Elizabethan tragedy.

Marlowe constructed the character of Dr. Faustus to represent within himself both characteristics of the renaissance view of humanity as divinely good and helishphly evil. First, Dr Faustus is presented as a scholar of all things including divinity, the highest Renaissance scholarly discipline. Then, Faustus is shown as dissatisfied with the limitations of humanity and grasping for unlimited knowledge, which is Biblical allusion to Adam and Eve who ate of the Tree of knowledge. Throughout the play .Faustus descends to lower and lower planes of knowledge in his pursuit for the “power” and “omnipotence” that come from knowledge. Dr. Faustus also represent classic Elizabethan tragedy. First the tragic hero has a flaw or makes an error in judgment that lead to his own doom. It’s hard to say whether Faustus had a fatal flaw in his character or whether he is doomed by a faulty understanding that lead to a fatally disastrous error of judgment. All along the way, Faustus has doubts and hesitatation which speaks for a integrity of his moral character .he did not reckon the power of evil highly enough, that he thought that with omnipotent knowledge he could free himself from the chains of evil around himself.

Dr Faustus as a Tragic Hero:   Drama is always relies on the character as well as character in action. Drama is dialogues and actions, drama take a figure of Tragedy, comedy, Tragic and etc. if certain dialogues and action as  expression are solemnly depicted on the stage, it make the main character of the drama as a tragic one. Dramatist’s treatment with hero makes him serious as well as so much pathetic that one should say that is tragic drama.

                  The term ‘Tragedy ‘encompasses certain point that are hamartia, catharsis, sensational incidents, and sudden panic and at the end death is the ultimate reality. Whether Dr.Faustus by Christopher Marlowe is tragic or not perplexes us, because the play is old as well as very relevant to modern times. Which concept should be applied to it? Common man is the chief character in the new generation. Aristotle asserts that the hero should be good, realistic, moral man while modern perspective is something different. Good and evil qualities are the sign of modern drama.

Dr.Faustus is, somehow, not too much good & bed. He is an amalgam of good and evil qualities. His mind is more compelled towards evil path. So it is now enough easy to prove him as a tragic hero.

The debate regarding “Dr.Faustus” as a tragic drama is taken into consideration because it taken into clash between Age of Renaissance and medieval age, morality, several Christian concepts, values and worldly knowledge which is divinely oriented, Extreme hunger of gaining.

Faustus was indeed, intelligent, knowledgeable, philosopher because he read most of the books but he was not a truly moral man. He aspires to utilize his power, plumb the any story of the universe and to remakes the map of Europe. Marlowe has made him the tragic hero by Christian concepts but not from modern perspective. He wants to try to enhance Faustus great pang and pain by Christian values. If we see in history of literature countable dramatist might have shown a tragic downfall of the protagonist who has knowledge of the world no doubt he so patients but his horizons seems narrow. Everything is possible to him but his yearning is somehow sapped.

In the age of Renaissance god was replaced by men and Faustus has rejected the importance of god. He favors of men that should be at the center. Even being a man of Renaissance, Faustus is a modern example of the current age.

Faustus fearful mind starts creating illusion of Christ’s blood. He dreams that god would forgive him but that was out of control. He is clearly wrecked with remorse, yet he is not longer seemed to be able atone for. Faustus cannot bear the reality. He does not wish to die. He becomes like a madman. There is a failure of Christianity at the end of the drama because Faustus fails to repent.