Dryden's Final Poetic Mode: The Fables

Title

en_US Dryden's Final Poetic Mode: The Fables

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US This book has a dust jacket (book cover)

en_US Cedric D. Reverand II

Creator

en_US Dryden, John

Date

2016-01-25T19:29:11Z

en_US 2002-08

en_US 1988

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:29:11Z

Date Issued

en_US 1988

Abstract

en_US This book seems to me to be a typical example of American literary criticism in the late Twentieth Century. Since it concerns the only fable in the collection, one portion of particular interest to Aesopic fable researchers will be the section on Dryden's The Cock and the Fox, which is his rendition of Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale with significant attention paid to the added or expanded passages vis-à-vis Chaucer's text. Reverand sees the story as whirling ideals and principles around in a carnival fun house (155). There are legitimate competing viewpoints that vie for our assent, but we are knotted up in laughter. The inversions already in Chaucer are extended. Dryden's expansions and additions have to do particularly with woman, flattery, and poetry. As to the latter, even Dryden the poet is implicated in the parody on singers like Chanticleer's father, for Dryden too is a singer. A key part of the story is Chanticleer's citing and mistranslating of the statement mulier est hominis confusio. The cock translates Woman is to Man his Soveraign Bliss (158). The section concludes with this sentence: The result, rather than being disquieting, is exhilarating contradiction, an ironic chaos that playfully keeps the reader off-balance and laughing heartily at the contradictory game.

Identifier

en_US 812281217

en_US 5172 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/80743

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US University of Pennsylvania Press

en_US Philadelphia, PA

Subject

en_US PR3418.F5 R48 1988

en_US John Dryden Secondary

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole