The Modern Language Review · 1996 · 53 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesFrenchLiteratureLiterary CriticismLiterary StudiesPoetryFrench PoetrySeventeenth-century French LiteratureSeventeenth-century LiteratureArtistic PersonaImperial DiscourseLiterary Adaptation HistoryPoetic AuthorityTextual Meaning
Dryden, hailed as England’s first great poet, built his art by extensively reading, translating, and appropriating a wide array of European writers, thereby grounding his work in a rich textual tradition. Kramer’s study extends beyond Dryden himself to examine how dynastic shifts, national revolutions, and personal reversals shape poetic alliances, identities, and gender representations, offering a fresh perspective for scholars of literary lineage. By tracing Dryden’s career, Kramer analyzes his adoption of Corneille’s misquoting tactics and his broader literary imperialism, proposing frameworks that illustrate how poets’ relationships with predecessors evolve from conflict to productive truce under political and cultural pressures. Kramer demonstrates that Dryden appropriated other writers’ works to create new art, and that post‑1688, his poetic persona transformed from a male plunderer to a vulnerable, sometimes female, figure seeking to be claimed by the spirits of his male predecessors.
John Dryden (1631-1700) was first great poet, observed W.J. Bate, to labour under the burden of past. Over years, he read, wrote about, and adapted or translated an extraordinary number of European writers; these in turn formed textual ground from which his own art emerged. In The Imperial Dryden, David B. Kramer shows how Dryden used other writers' works not to save himself trouble of making but to make anew. Tracing course of poet's career, Kramer focuses first on Dryden's approach to French poet and critic Pierre Corneille, who had developed a subversive strategy of misquoting his predecessors - a strategy Dryden soon learned to use against Corneille himself. He then explores Dryden's more open plundering of secondary French poets: this tactic constituted a kind of literary imperialism that echoed England's own imperial ambitions regarding foreign wealth. Finally, Kramer shows how, after Revolution of 1688, Dryden's poetic persona shifted from that of plundering male to vulnerable neuter to, at moments, a disenfranchised female wishing to be seized and impregnated by spirits of her great male predecessors. Kramer's study extends beyond works of Dryden himself into several larger questions of literary history: effect of dynastic changes and national revolutions upon poetic alliances and ruptures; manner in which a poetic sensibility defines itself in concert with, and in opposition to, shifting groups of writers and schools; and ways in which personal reverses may alter gender identification. Demonstrating how poets' relations with their predecessors can modulate from agonistic struggle to uneasy but productive truce, Kramer proposes a series of frameworks for discussing effects of political and cultural circumstance upon poetic production. An original contribution to Dryden scholarship, this book should also attract any scholar interested in relationship between authors and their literary forebears.