British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Dryden in the 1690s: The Virgil and the Fables
Abstract
‘Thy wars brought nothing about’: The Critique of Military Heroism in the later Dryden
Professor James Winn, Boston University
In his first known poem, Dryden praises the boy linguist Hastings as greater than Alexander, 'Who conquer'd Men, but not their Languages'. Despite his dutiful gestures as Laureate in support of Charles II's ill-fated military efforts, the skeptical attitude toward martial exploits prefigured in the Hastings elegy found frequent expression in Dryden’s work, especially after 1688, when we find him referring to Homer's warriors as 'those ungodly Man-killers, whom we Poets, when we flatter, call Heroes'. He undercuts conventional notions of heroism in the opera King Arthur, in the second half of the Aeneis, and throughout Fables. Dryden’s distaste for William's continental wars and for the idea of a standing army gives a satiric edge to these passages, but I shall argue that his doubt that war could ultimately bring anything 'about' was broad and general, contrasting strongly with his firm belief in the efficacy of art, especially poetry.
Publications
James A. Winn, Chairman of the Department of English at Boston University, is the author of John Dryden and his World (Yale, 1987), now the standard biography of the poet, and of 'When Beauty Fires the Blood': Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden (Michigan, 1992), a revisionist interpretation placing Dryden’s poetic practice and theory in the context of contemporary developments in music, art, and the politics of gender. He has recently completed a general book on war and poetry.