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Reviews Interpreting Dryden A.H. DE QUEH E N George McFadden. Dryden, The Public Writer, 1660-1685 Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978. xi, 305. $16.50 W.K. Thomas, The Crafting of'Absalom and Achitophel': Dryden '5 'Pen for a Party' Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1978. vii, 239· $7.50 One answer to Johnson's complaint, in his 'Life of Dryden,' that Absalom and Achitophel fails as narrative through an implausible, romantic conclusion is the argument that a poem derives its integrity from patterns of sound and syntax, imagery and allusion, and not necessarily from a superficial plot. Dryden himself responded to Rymer's plot-centred criticism by enumerating the other parts of dramatic composition, and W.K. Thomas announces the same kind of approach at the outset of The Crafting of 'Absalom and Achitophel': 'Because a considerable portion of the poem has remained in comparative obscurity, [past readers] have spoken of its genre as uncertain and its structure as broken, and for the same reason they have missed altogether many of the finer points of literary skill.' Thomas proceeds through historical exposition and rhetorical analysis to reveal a richness of meaning and an ingenuity of structure which, if not conducive to a succinct definition of the genre, at least discredit the kind of misapprehension implicit in 'a failed narrative.' An alternative response to Johnson is to take up his subsequent comment on the unqualified success of the 'poem political and controversial' and contend that such poems exist structurally - not just allusively - in the historical continuum, commonly taking the form of rejoinders in a protracted argument. While Dryden 's poems on affairs of state show exceptional awareness of coherence and self-sufficiency as literary requirements, the proper emphasis may still be on 'a dialogue between Dryden and his age.' The phrase is George McFadden's, and he introduces Dryden, The Public Writer with the assertion that the poet was consistently dealing with real people, 'always in a rhetorical situation, struggling with the constraints that role implies for free poetic creation.' That struggle, apparent in both works and prefaces, shows Dryden's concern for what ought to be, as he tried 'to redefine imaginatively each addressee, each audience, even each target UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME XLIX, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1980 0042-0247/80/°500-0266$00.00/0 © UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS INTeRPRETING DRYDEN 2b7 of satire, into the ideally appropriate recipient for what he, the poet, wanted to say; and he tried to recast the norms of each literary form he used 50 that the work might be an enduring poetic realization while still meeting the rhetorical needs of the moment.' Dryden, The Public Writer is in two parts. The first, 'Dryden the Poet: is divided into five chapters: on Dryden's 'early attitudes,' his controversy with Sir Robert Howard, his relations with 'his betters,' 'the courtiers,' and 'the wits.' The main impetus is chronological in the form of literary biography, but McFadden is deceptively modest in calling his work a supplement to Charles E. Ward. Thematic and generic studies are very skilfully reconciled with biography, and the result is an original and lucid work of criticism, in which the life of the past serves the literature of the present. The second part, 'The Succession Crisis and Its Critic,' has four chapters: on Aureng-Zebe; on Oedipus, Troilus, and The Spanish Friar; on Absalom and Achitophei; and on the last works of Charles's reign, notably Albion and Albanius and Threnodia Augustalis. Some works are, of necessity, barely mentioned in the book: Annus Mirabilis, The Medal, and, surprisingly in view of Dryden's 'Vindication,' The Duke of Guise. McFadden disputes the popular conception of Dryden as a reserved, impersonal writer, a conception fostered by the self-portrait in the 'Defence of An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.' He points to Dryden's 'startling intimacy of public address' in dedications which openly discuss his life as a writer, and he suggests that Dryden was obliged, and perhaps preferred, to make in public the addresses which courtiers made in private. Dryden's financial difficulties, which must have been acute when both the King's Company and the Exchequer lacked funds in...

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