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.