Enchanted Ground: Reimagining John Dryden

Front Cover

At the time of his death in 1700, John Dryden was acknowledged as England's greatest writer, his reputation even rivaling that of Shakespeare. Certainly, whether considered as a poet, a dramatist, or as a critic, Dryden far outstripped his contemporaries in the sheer scope and variety of his literary production. The amazing versatility of his pen was matched only by the transformational energy that shapes individual works, from heroic dramas to great satires.

For Enchanted Ground, Jayne Lewis and Maximillian E. Novak have brought together many of the world's experts on Dryden, and their essays reflect a range of new, uniquely twenty-first-century views of him. The book is divided into two sections. The first explores Dryden's role as a public poet who had made himself the voice of the restored Stuart court. The second considers Dryden's relationship to the arts and particularly to the past and to Shakespeare.

Dryden was a poet for all ages. These essays provide fresh readings of Dryden and bring scholarship on him fully up-to-date.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
3
Alexanders Feast 17 24 2756 320 Heroique Stanzas 59 61
5
Dryden and the Consumption of History
31
Dryden and Dissent
70
Drydens Emergence as a Political Satirist
111
Conquest of Granada 25 11516
115
Dryden and Gibbon
147
Anxious Comparisons in John Drydens Troilus and Cressida
185
Theatrical Dryden
226
Marriage AlaMode 114 1334 138
239
The Case of AurengZebe
244
The Duke of Guise 236 Ode to Anne Killigrew
274
Index
337
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Jayne Lewis is a professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Maximillian E. Novak is a professor emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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