John Dryden
Selected Writings
Published on 20. August 2020
Book
Hardback
932 pages
978-0-19-965525-0 (ISBN)
Description
This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the poetry and prose of John Dryden, the most important poet, dramatist, translator, and literary theorist of the later seventeenth century. He wrote across the tumultuous decades of political and cultural revolution - years stretching from the end of the Cromwellian Protectorate in 1659 through the reign of William III - and he addressed the crucial events of those decades. These were years of unprecedented political revolution, and of a remarkable transformation of English literary culture, with John Dryden at the literary centre. He invented new literary modes including the theatre of spectacle known as heroic drama; he perfected the heroic couplet, a form that became the chief instrument of public poetry; he adapted works of Shakespeare and Milton; he wrote excoriating satire; he brought the translation of classical poetry to new levels of perfection; and throughout his career he wrote works of literary theory that defined his own practices and the literary ethos of his age. By the time that Dryden died in 1700 he had redefined English literary culture; his work recalled and embodied all the genres and modes of early modern literature and anticipated the brilliance of eighteenth-century satire.
This edition represents the span of a long career in its remarkable variety. All the genres in which Dryden wrote are represented: panegyrics, lyrics, odes, epigrams, verse epistles, historical poems, commendatory verse, commemorative poems, religious poems, satires, plays, prologues and epilogues, translations, critical prose, dedications, prefaces, biography, and letters.
Explanatory notes and commentary enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Dryden, a Chronology and a Biographical Appendix.
This edition represents the span of a long career in its remarkable variety. All the genres in which Dryden wrote are represented: panegyrics, lyrics, odes, epigrams, verse epistles, historical poems, commendatory verse, commemorative poems, religious poems, satires, plays, prologues and epilogues, translations, critical prose, dedications, prefaces, biography, and letters.
Explanatory notes and commentary enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Dryden, a Chronology and a Biographical Appendix.
Reviews / Votes
With this fine edition of Dryden's works, well-respected scholar Steven Zwicker makes a fine addition to the "21st-Century Oxford Authors" series. Dryden's major works are included along with key letters, and the editorial apparatus is intelligently and gracefully minimal ... This volume deserves a wide readership. * A. Chapman, CHOICE * Students would do well to study the writings of the great English poet and dramatist John Dryden...Drawing upon modern scholarship's finest minds, his collation is well worth the study; his introduction valuable indeed. * John W. Davis, Decatur Daily * This volume has a different coverage than my handy, one-volume Kinsley, and is the better for it, because it provides a greater variety of genres. * Cedric D. Reverand II, Eighteenth-Century Life * This is a superb anthology. The introduction, coherently conceived, seamlessly executed, and finely calibrated for readability, usefully provides a summative and analytic account of Dryden's life and works. * A. W. Lee, Johnsonian News Letter *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Adult education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
16 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 53 mm
Weight
1293 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-965525-0 (9780199655250)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
06/2024
Oxford University Press
€31.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Steven N. Zwicker was born in California and graduated from UCLA and Brown University. He is Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Washington University where he has directed many literary programmes, including the Literature and History Program; the Mellon Postdoctoral Program; the Mellon Summer Dissertation Seminar Program; and most recently the Vertical Seminar Program. He has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, and the California Institute of Technology and was British Academy Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Liverpool and Aberdeen.
Content
Introduction Note on the Text Chronology Heroique Stanzas (1659) Astraea Redux (1660) To the Lady Castlemaine (c.1664) Annus Mirabilis (1667) An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668) Of Heroique Playes (1672) Dryden to John Wilmot, earl of Rochester (April May 1673) Marriage A-la-Mode (1673) Mac Flecknoe (c.1676) Dryden to Lord Latimer (July 1677) All for Love (1678) Absalom and Achitophel (1681) The Medall (1682) Religio Laici (1682) To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (1684) From Sylvae (1685) Preface Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, The Latter Part of the Third Book (Against the Fear of Death) Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , The Fourth Book (Concerning the Nature of Love) Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book the Fifth Horace, Odes 1.9 Horace, Odes 3.29 To the Pious Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew (1686) Dryden to Sir George Etherege (February 1687) The Hind and the Panther (1687) A Song for St Cecilia s Day (1687) Lines on Milton (1688) Eleonora (1692) From The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1693) Juvenal, Satire 3 The Fable of Acis, Polyphemus, and Galatea (1693) Dryden to John Dennis (March 1693) Dryden to Jacob Tonson (30 August 1693) Dryden to William Walsh (12 December 1693) To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve (1694) To Sir Godfrey Kneller (1694) Dryden to Jacob Tonson (29 October 1695) An Ode, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell (1696) The Life of Lucian (1696) From The Works of Virgil (1697) Pastoral 10 Georgics 4 AEneis 6 Alexander s Feast (1697) Dryden to Jacob Tonson (December 1697) Lines on Tonson (c.1698) Dryden to the duchess of Ormond (Winter 1698) From Fables (1700) Preface To Her Grace the Dutchess of Ormond To My Honour> 'd Kinsman, John Driden, of Chesterton The Wife of Bath Her Tale from Chaucer> 's Canterbury Tales Dryden to Mrs Elizabeth Steward (11 April 1700) Prologue, Epilogue, and The Secular Masque for Fletcher s The Pilgrim (1700) Commentary Biographical Appendix Index of Titles