Literary Transmission and Authority: Dryden and Other Writers: 17 (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought, Series Number 17)

Cambridge University Press, 7/29/1993
EAN 9780521441117, ISBN10: 0521441110

Hardcover, 176 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm
Language: English

Dryden's writings are studded with names, conspicuously those of his literary predecessors and contemporaries. He defined himself as a writer in relation to other writers, and in doing so was something of a pioneer professional man of letters: poet, playwright, critic, prose stylist, England's foremost verse translator, the first literary historian to provide a conception of periods, and what would now be termed a comparatist. This 1993 book looks at Dryden's literary relationships with Ben Jonson and with French authors (notably Corneille), at issues raised by the work thought to be his greatest by Romantic and contemporary readers, Fables Ancient and Modern; and at Samuel Johnson's definition of Dryden, whose biography in Johnson's Lives was the author's favourite. The book has implications for questions of literary reception, influence and intertextuality, as well as for the reputation and context of Dryden himself.

Contributing authors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
borrowed plumage, varied plumage Earl Miner
1. Dryden and negotiations of literary succession and precession Jennifer Brady
2. Onely victory in him
the imperial Dryden David B. Kramer
3. Ovid reformed
issues of Ovid, fables, morals and the second epic in Fables Ancient and Modern Earl Miner
4. Another and the Same
Johnson's Dryden Greg Clingham
Index.