British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Dryden in the 1690s: The Virgil and the Fables
Abstract
The aesthetics of Dryden's Virgilian translations
Dr Robin Sowerby, University of Stirling
'Poetry requires Ornament', Dryden remarked when discussing the principles governing his word choice in his 'Dedication of the Aeneis' and in his 'Postscript' to the same work he summed up his own contribution to English poetry in terms of what he had supplied himself in the way of the choice of words and harmony of numbers achieved in his Virgil translation. In the light of this and of the later reactions against ornament in poetry and against his version of the Aeneid, this paper will clarify Dryden's aesthetic and his concomitant idea about translation as in a comparison with his version of Virgil with the later versions of Virgil made by Wordsworth also in heroic couplets of the 1820s. The comparison will embrace poetic diction, use of the figures and the management of rhythm and emphasis. Reference will also be made to the two poets' ideas about the language of poetry as expressed in their various prefaces and critical pronouncements.
Bibliography
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Dryden's Aeneid: A Selection with Commentary, Bristol Classical Press, 1986, 248pp
'The Freedom of Dryden's Homer', Translation & Literature, V, March 1996 pp. 26-50
'The Last Parting of Hector and Andromache' in John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays, edited by Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, Oxford University Press, 2000 pp. 240-63
'Augustan Dryden' in John Dryden, Classicist and Translator, Translation & Literature, X (2001) pp. 51-66