Today's Writer-John Dryden
He is seen as dominating the literary life of
Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in
literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romantic writer Sir Walter Scott called
him "Glorious John". Dryden, the poet,
is best known today as a satirist, although he wrote only two
great original satires: Mac Flecknoe (1682) and The Medall (1682). His most
famous poem, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), contains several brilliant satiric
portraits. Dryden also pointed out what he thought were Shakespeare's flaws;
Dryden reworked some of Shakespeare's plays into his own.
John Dryden is rightly
considered “the father of English criticism.”. He was the first to teach the
English people to. determine the merit of composition based on principles.
Dryden's poems have the qualities of his plays:
some middling songs and unspontaneous lyrics, careful and melodic
versification, and a lack of poetic expression of the different emotions. Despite
touches of false ornament and operatic banality, his odes are splendid. Dryden died
on May 12, 1700.
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