The Poems of John DrydenVolume Four 1693-1696The poems of John Dryden is a four-volume edition of the poetry of John Dryden (1631-1700) resulting from a complete reappraisal of the canon, the text, and the context of his work. The modernised text is prepared from a fresh examination of early printed editions, and takes account of the large number of surviving manuscripts. The annotation is particularly substantial for the most important poems and a headnote accompanies each one, giving details of its date, circumstances, publication history, sources and contemporary reception.Volumes One and Two (published in 1995) covered poems published between 1649 and 1685, including his historical poem Annus Mirabilis, his celebrated satires Mac Flecknoe, Absalom and Achitophel, and The Medal, and his sustained meditation on religious faith and authority, Religio Laici.Volume Three covers poems published between 1686 and 1693, a watershed period which saw Dryden's fall from official favour at the Revolution of 1688-9. A major item in this volume is the Hind and the Panther, Dryden's apologia for his new Roman catholic beliefs.
The extensive headnote and annotation to this poem explain its allegorical procedures and subtle theological arguments, while also analysing its use of sources. Another principal inclusion in Volume Three is the Discourse Concerning Satire, Dryden's extended critique of the history and practice of satire - the most substantial and influential essay on the topic in the seventeenth century. The headnote guides the reader through Dryden's somewhat circuitous argument, and the substantial annotation documents the relation of Dryden's text to previous treatments of the subject. The volume also includes a number of important poems prompted by public events and private friendships.Volume Four covers poems published between 1693 and 1696, principally Dryden's translations from Juvenal and Persius, and those from Ovid and Homer included in the miscellany Examen Poeticum (1693). Extensive but well-focused annotation charts the relationship of Dryden's versions with their originals, with previous translations, and with other works of literature, and alerts readers to a range of contemporary allusions which these poems incorporate.
Throughout the volume, careful glossing of Dryden's vocabulary - more extensive than any available hitherto - reveals the imaginative precision of his poetic language.This new edition represents the most informative and accessible edition of Dryden's poetry, incorporating extensive new research and providing an invaluable resource for students of English poetry and of Restoration culture.Back FlapThe EditorsDr Paul Hammond is a Reader in Seventeenth-Century English Literature at the University of Leeds. He has previously edited: Selected Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (Bristol Classical Press, 1982), and Selected Prose of Alexander Pope (Cambridge University Press, 1987). He is also the author of: John Oldham and the Renewal of Classical Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1983), John Dryden: A Literary Life (Macmillan, 1991), Love Between Men in English Literature (Macmillan, 1996) and Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome (Oxford University Press, 1999). He is the co-editor with David Hopkins of John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays (Oxford University Press, 2000).David Hopkins is a Reader in English Poetry at the University of Bristol.
He is the author of John Dryden (Cambridge University Press, 1986), The Routledge Anthology of Poets on Poets (Routledge, 1994), and has edited: John Dryden: Selected Poems (Everyman, 1998), Ovid: Selected Poems (ibid, 1998), Homer: Selected Verse from the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey', translated by Alexander Pope (ibid, 1999). He has also co-edited Horace Made New (with Charles Martindale, Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Abraham Cowley: Selected Poems (with Tom Mason, Carcanet, 1994).