Dryden: Study Questions
1. What distinctions or contrasts does Dryden make between Horace and Juvenal? Whom does he like more, and why? To what extent does his distinction serve to define two different kinds of satire? Where would you place Dryden's satires--closer to Horace or to Juvenal? Is Horace as wimpy, Juvenal as vigorous, as Dryden suggests? Is Dryden accurate in attributing their differences to the ages in which they lived? What ideas about satire are implicit in the distinctions he makes or explicit elsewhere in the "Discourse."2. Another way of approaching the definition of satire in Dryden is through his discussion of the classical history of the term. What does the history of satire (as recounted by Dryden) tells us about the meaning of the genre, or about Dryden's ideas about that meaning?
3. Regardless of our voting intentions, our politics are likely to be quite different from those of Dryden in Absalom and Achitophel. (Even Republicans-well, maybe not Bush-are likely to stop short of an absolute monarchy.) On what grounds can we appreciate the politics of Absalom and Achitophel, or are we left to enjoy the poem only on the basis of its witty style and striking portraiture?
4. There is not a great deal of comprehensible plot in Absalom and Achitophel and perhaps less comprehensible argument (although it is important to try to reconstruct as much of the argument as one can). If the movement of the poem lies in its sequence of satire characters, what does that movement tell us about the poem's satirical and political purposes? We will certainly want to discuss both positive and negative characters in class.
5. In particular, the character of David/Charles seems quite different at the end of the poem than it is at the beginning. Does the change have apparent internal causes in the character, do his changes reflect changes in the ways in which he is regarded by others, or do the seem arbitrarily chosen to fit the needs of the poet? Is his final speech a resolution of the issues of the poem?
6. What do you make of the poem's self-conscious parallels with II Samuel? How would Absalom and Achitophel seem different if Dryden were to provide the real names of his contemporary figures? What is added by hiding them rather transparently behind the characters of the biblical plot? Is there such a thing as the "mock-biblical" in parallel to the mock heroic? Are Dryden's departures from the David-Absalom story significant?
7. Mac Flecknoe seems to unite three worlds--the heroic world of Homer and (especially) Virgil, the underworld of seventeenth-century London, and the intellectual world of literary production. What friction and energy are generated as these worlds rub off against each other? What is the satiric effect? If we see Mac Flecknoe as a typically mock-heroic poem, what does the mock-heroic accomplish?
8. Shadwell was a minor but not inconsiderable dramatist whose literary reputation now rests on Dryden's vicious description of him. Do we merely enjoy the description, or is Dryden attacking more important targets than Shadwell himself? What is the relationship of Shadwell to the social and literary contexts in which Dryden sets him?
Rochester: Study Questions
1. Rochester's "Satyr against Mankind" seems to contain the kernel of an intellectual position, as well as satire against human reason and behavior. What is that position? How serious is Rochester in maintaining it? To what degree does it seem to underlie his other poems as well? We will probably begin our discussion of Rochester with this, his most famous poem.
2. Sex is certainly an unavoidable topic in Rochester, from romance to pornography. He is certainly bisexual, but his attitudes may have other deviations as well. Is there a serious and consistent position that can explain the variety of sexual attitudes and ironies in Rochester's poems?
3. In particular, a number of Rochester's poems concentrate on sexual incapacities of one sort or another. What are the various causes of the incapacities he describes? In what senses does incapacity become comic? What is the relationship between impotence and the human condition?
4. What is Rochester's view of the sexual nature of women? Is he (like Juvenal) misogynous? What is the relationship between women as objects of love and women as sexual objects, and is the relationship a consistent one? Beyond the sex-love connection what are Rochester's general attitudes towards women? Consider in particular the gender revelations of Artemisa.
5. All right, Rochester is simply outrageous! But Rochester can hardly be anything simply. Is he just outrageous in your opinion or is he deliberately outrageous (or both), and in so far as he is deliberately outrageous, what purpose does his offensiveness seem to serve? To what extent is he a calculated and effective offender of social norms, including some we may believe it ourselves?
6. But Rochester's offensiveness may also be seen as play and disguise. In contrast to the idea that satire characteristically makes moral judgments on socially significant behavior, Rochester violates moral judgments, and his play seems to call everything into question. But if everything is called into question, what is the point of writing satires?
7. Rochester was a famous courtier. To what extent can we see his poetry as aristocratic satire? What values and characteristics would you associate with aristocratic satire, and how does it differ from the socially inferior satire of Horace, Juvenal, and Dryden? Does it seem strange to satirize from a privileged social position?
8. At the end of his short life, Rochester underwent a conversion to Christianity that may have been sincere or may have been his final disguise--his joke on God. Is there any indication of a latent religiosity in his poems (which otherwise seem as atheistic, hedonistic, and self-centered as possible)?