Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In the introduction to his still-useful edition of John Dryden's critical essays, George Watson warns his reader, ‘Dryden's literary criticism must look odd to most who approach it for the first time’ (v). Knowing that Samuel Johnson dubbed Dryden ‘the father of English criticism’, we expect the work of a pioneering genius. What we find, however, is a surprisingly cautious writer, who struggled through a series of now seemingly trivial debates while also attempting to humour the whims of a fickle audience. Dryden's ‘oddities’ are only manifested more clearly in the dramatic criticism of his contemporaries. Alexander Pope announced in An Essay on Criticism (1711) and the Dunciad (1728, revised 1742 and 1743) that the other major critics of the period - Thomas Rymer, John Dennis and Charles Gildon - were beneath contempt. The prevailing attitude towards late seventeenth-century dramatic critics and criticism has changed little since Pope's day. René Wellek, for example, begins his monumental History of Modern Criticism circa 1750, curtly dismissing earlier criticism as rudimentary and of little more than ‘antiquarian’ interest. Anyone who reads only snippets of late seventeenth-century dramatic criticism found in literary anthologies will almost certainly arrive at the same conclusion. The arcane debates these writers engaged in - is rhyme or blank verse more appropriate in serious ... log in or subscribe to read full text