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LECTURE - 4

PREFACE TO FABLES

DRYDEN

Dryden brings us to the second half of the 17th century. There is a gap of one
hundred and fifty years between Sydney and Dryden and this one and a half century
brought about tremendous changes and saw the rise of several important
movements.

Sydney belongs to the dawn of renaissance in England and immediately after

him we have the great age of renaissance .England discovers her own soul and this
results in strong patriotism, a great deal of enthusiasm and fervour. The discovery of
many new lands found expression in beautiful lyrical poetry and in some of the
greatest plays ever written. The Elizabethan age was essentially romantic. The writer
of that age had no interest in studying and imitating the classical writers of Greece
and Rome. They would create literature according to their own genius. (In the age of
creativity there is no criticism, it is only when there is no creativity, that there is
criticism.)

Majority of the writers were not even aware of the existence of Aristotle. It was
the age of imagination and the writers had no time for criticism. Generally the age of
creation and criticism don't coincide. There is no critical writing in Elizabethan age
but towards the end of this age we see morbidity .The strong passion and
imagination came under restraint. Writers became over sentimental, vulgar and
obscene. we see action for the sake of action to create sensational effect. There was
no problem as long as we had writers like Shakespeare and Marlowe, but when
liberty came into the hands of those who had no sense of responsibility then
immediately we observed a sharp decline in the quality of literature. The man who
warned the readers and the people about this decline was a contemporary of
Shakespeare named Ben Johnson.

Ben Johnson was a great admirer of ancient writers because he thought that
the Greeks and Romans had attained perfection. They had provided guidance which
was valid for all times. If we want to avoid cheap sensationalism and vulgarity, we
have Ben Johnson as a poet, playwright and critic who believes in the supremacy of
classical writers. He may be regarded as the forerunner of neoclassical literature.

The neo-classicists looked down upon nature. They despised villagers and
village life. Literature flourished in cities mostly in the royal courts and the drawing
rooms of rich patrons. As a result every writer was patronized by a rich patron and
would exaggeratedly praise his master. We have extreme exaggeration, artificiality,
lack of feeling and lack of sincerity in the literature of that time. Besides, it was an
age of satire because it was an age of controversy...religious, political and personal.
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It was this age which produced the theory of poetic diction. This theory had
two aspects.

 Language of literature is different from spoken language.

 Language of poetry is different from the language of prose

Dryden belongs to this age and in his poetry and drama, he is a typical neo-
classicist . He wrote in Heroic couplet and made the flow of his verse as smooth as
possible. He wrote in elegant manner but as a critic he is much greater than as a
poet and as a dramatist.

As a critic, he is not a typical neo-classicist because he realizes the

importance of fiery imagination which was banned by the neo classicists .Dryden
believes in the rules of Aristotle.

Aristotle yet he does not recognize the supremacy. He says "Aristotle had
derived his rules in the light of Greek drama and that he had not read the plays of
Shakespeare. If he had read the plays of Shakespeare ,his rules would have been
different."

Dryden talks about spirit because he had read and was influenced by Long
Ginus book 'On the Sublime'. That is why Dryden as a critic is much different from
Dryden as a poet and playwright .He was a versatile literary figure, a great poet,
playwright, a prose writer, a great critic, and in generally considered to be the father
of modern prose style. He introduced clarity and directness in prose. He wrote about
all the aspects of criticism. He wrote the theory of drama , both Tragedy and
Comedy. The critical study of various branches of poetry such as epic, elegy, satire
and so on .He also talked about poetic drama, practical criticism. descriptive,
evaluative, judicial and comparative criticism. In his evaluative and comparative
criticism, his approach is historical and psychological. Nearly all his works of
criticism were published as prefaces to his poems and plays. Dryden was also a
translator. He translated many great works of antiquity including 'Aenead', the epic
of Virgil.

Then he published a volume of translation which he called 'Fable'. Fable is a

story in which animals try to teach a moral lesson but Dryden is not using the word
'Fable' in the sense of animal stories. By 'Fable' he simply means 'short tales'. These
tales were taken from different sources such as 'Homer' , 'Virgil', 'Ovid', 'Boccaccio',
'Chaucer', and so on and were translated into the English of his days in poetic
diction of which he was quite proud. He did not imitate the diction and meter of the
original stories.
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PREFACE TO THE FABLES

In the preface to his Fables, he studies the great writers of the past and then
makes their comparative studies. In his comparative and judicial criticism, ,Dryden's
approach is both psychological and historical.

First he studies the character of the writer, the kind of personality he had and finds
the reflection of his personality in his work .This is psychological approach. Then
he tries to investigate the background age of the writer in which he wrote. This is
historical approach.

While evaluating a writer to decide about his greatness, Dryden not only sees
what he has written but also studies the circumstances in which he wrote. For
example: If a poet wrote in the age of darkness when his nation was not fully
civilized, when literature were still in their infancy, when he had no example before
him to guide him, so naturally his works will have lots of problems. We do not find
refinement and elegance in his works because he was at a very serious
disadvantage.

. On the other hand when a poet wrote at a time when a poet wrote at a time
when his nation was fully civilized, when literary activities had fully started, when
there was a fully developed language, so the works of that writer will be quite mature
and it will lack crudity.

The second writer uses appropriate words and phrases but to consider him
superior than the first one is not a fair judgement. Dryden considers the
achievements of the first one far superior than the achievements of the second one.
So this is Historical criticism. Keeping that in mind, he compares the two writers to
determine the greatness of one of them.

In his comparative criticism, he takes into consideration the subject matter,

and the power of forming grand conceptions. He tells us how this project began and
how it gradually grew up. Before writing his book, he had already translated Virgil's
Aeneid but he personally found great affinity with Homer. This was something
quite strange in his age because the 17th and 18th century writers preferred Virgil to
Homer. They found Homer crude and Virgil artistic but Dryden likes Homer and
therefore he decided to translate the first book of Iliad as an experiment intending to
produce translation of the rest of books of Iliad. Having translated Homer's Iliad, he
did not stop there.
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Having translated the works of Homer, he thought about Ovid (Roman poet).
Ovid had written a book entitled 'Metamorphosis' , in which he retold stories from
Greek mythology in a very different manner. He wrote these stories for the pleasure
of the reader. In this book he talks about the origin of Ovid's book and also
discusses the speeches which Ovid had included in his book.

Having translated that , he thought of Chaucer. There are a great deal of

similarities between 'Ovid' and 'Chaucer' .Ovid was one of the favourite writers of the
17th century great readers but Dryden considered Chaucer greater than Ovid. In the
17th century, Chaucer was almost forgotten. Those who knew him considered him
to be a primitive poet of the bygone ages.

Dryden is the first who revived the English readers interest in Chaucer to
convince the educated people of his time that Chaucer was a universal poet, a poet
who has significance in all ages and all countries. Dryden considered this to be a
patriotic task. he was proud of being an English man. having translated Chaucer
,immediately Boccaccio came to his mind. They have a great deal common among
them. They were both educated, their temperaments and nature were the same.
Both had written 'Novella', both were inventers, both wrote in prose and verse.
Chaucer had borrowed a number of stories from Boccaccio but while retelling these
stories, he improved upon Boccaccio. Dryden says that if we keep in mind the Italian
background of Boccaccio and the English background of Chaucer, then there will be
no difficulty in saying that Chaucer was greater .He says that though Chaucer was
weak and struggling, yet his mind was extremely sharp.