John dryden mac flecknoe. Mac Flecknoe Mac Flecknoe Summary and Analysis 2022-10-25
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John Dryden was a prominent English poet, playwright, and literary critic of the 17th century. One of his most well-known works is the satirical poem "Mac Flecknoe," which was published in 1682.
"Mac Flecknoe" is a mock-heroic poem that satirizes Thomas Shadwell, a rival poet and playwright of Dryden's. Dryden uses the poem to mock Shadwell's lack of talent and originality, and to assert his own superiority as a poet.
In the poem, Dryden creates a fictional character named Mac Flecknoe, who is portrayed as the "idle, empty-headed" son of the king of dullness. Dryden compares Shadwell to Mac Flecknoe, suggesting that Shadwell is unworthy of the title of poet and that he is only fit to be the successor to the throne of dullness.
Throughout the poem, Dryden employs a variety of literary techniques to ridicule and mock Shadwell. He uses hyperbole, irony, and sarcasm to exaggerate Shadwell's flaws and to make fun of his lack of talent and originality.
One of the most famous lines in the poem is "His learning, vast, impertinent, and dull," which perfectly captures Dryden's contempt for Shadwell's supposed intellectual superiority. Dryden also compares Shadwell to a "fustian king," suggesting that his writing is pompous and pretentious.
Despite its satirical nature, "Mac Flecknoe" is a well-written and clever poem that showcases Dryden's wit and literary skill. It remains a classic example of satirical poetry and continues to be read and studied by literary scholars today.
Mac Flecknoe Summary
Dryden had not really made a radical departure from his concurrent political poems, however. It is near the Barbican, a defensive wall in London that surrounds a ruined Roman watchtower, and is in a notorious neighborhood filled with prostitutes and subpar actors. God has already tried us, Dryden argues, by giving the republicans what they wanted during the Commonwealth, and look what happened. Flecknoe concludes by exhorting his son not to focus on real plays but rather to work on acrostics or anagrams. Kings often hold a ball and scepter as the emblem of sovereignity. Placing literary dunces within the exalted context of a coronation ceremony and dignifying the event with comparisons to religious prophets and allusions to the Roman Empire at its zenith serve to deflate the satiric victims by drawing attention to the differences between the exalted and the lowly. All arguments, but most his plays, persuade, That for anointed dullness he was made.
Ascanius The son of Aeneas, he was the leader of Troy's Dardanian allies during the Trojan War. Unable to stand the pressures, he bows to outside forces and sacrifices his art. Likewise, the advent of Flecknoe is merely a prelude to the heralding of the ultimate epitome of Dullness, Shadwell. It also hints at the sleep-inducing merit of his monotonous works. They were outdated and did not make for good and meaningful comedy.
Shadwell is a large, proud man who revels in the bombast of his coronation. At his right hand our young Ascanius sat Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state. Meanwhile, Dryden continued to write excellent occasional verse, from prologues and epilogues to elegies to verse epistles. One great example of his influential work is Mac Flecknoe, which is believed to have been written in late 1678 or 1679, although it wasn't published until 1682. He spices couplets with triplets, masculine with feminine endings. They are preoccupied with the need for political stability and the concomitant necessity of loyalty to de jure monarchs, whose titles are inherited through primogenitive patrilinearity.
For Dryden, normally absent Astraea Justice does return. GradeSaver, 18 August 2017 Web. Hannibal He was the Carthaginian emperor who attacked Rome. In these poems Dryden engages in some of his most experimental prosody. Flecknoe was a third rate writer.
The first two lines are an ostentatious platitude on the transience of Life; how Fate eventually wins over the former. Why a member of so prestigious a family would have stooped to a member of the lesser gentry remains a subject for speculation. It appears as though one dunce advocates another. Nations hearing of him meet together. Dryden portrays Momus, the god of mockery, showing up at a celebration of the century.
The king himself the sacred unction made, As king by office, and as priest by trade: In his sinister hand, instead of ball, He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale; Love's kingdom to his right he did convey, At once his sceptre and his rule of sway; Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young, And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung, His temples last with poppies were o'er spread, That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head: Just at that point of time, if fame not lie, On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly. The greatest wielder of words in the poem is David himself, who comes forward finally to vindicate his power and position. His father, King Charles I was executed in 1649, and England subsequently entered the period known to history as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth and the country was a de facto republic, led by Oliver Cromwell. Neither desire was realized. A Satyre against Sedition. Scholars explain that such imagery allows continuous contrast between the glorified past and a debased present. In addition to illustrating Dryden's unique and biting wit, Mac Flecknoe is a particularly insightful poem in its ability to demonstrate the attitudes and feelings common in Restoration literature.
He contributed politically satirical prologues and epilogues to several plays. Sir Formal Sir Formal Trifle was a character in Shadwell's The Virtuoso. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day: Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty: Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign. The two poets had their political differences. This is ostensibly a diss track from 1682.
Under King James I, Jonson received royal favor and patronage for Jonson's second known play. The absurdity of the inflated speeches is obvious. He had written a less remarkable poem on the subject a decade earlier. From this point onward, he became know for "humors" comedy, a kind of comedy involving eccentric characters designed to represent a temperament, or humor, of humanity. Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known, Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne. Dryden uses a mock-heroic meter to represent Shadwell as Flecknoe, the king of an empire of dull poetry, and celebrates his dullness in the highest of terms. He contributed satiric portraits of old nemeses now openly Whiggish, Settle and Shadwell, to a sequel to Absalom and Achitophel, written mostly by another young protégé, Nahum Tate.
The imposing structure comes across as a huge oak that is monotonous and insensate. In thy felonious heart, though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. Similarly, Margery Kingsley notes how the stage and brothels are conflated by their physical proximity, how there seems to be a Hell below the Restoration-era stage. Nay let thy men of wit too be the same, All full of thee, and differing but in name; But let no alien Sedley interpose To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose. And I found Dryden's really funny and loved the metaphors he used! John the Baptist who arrived before Jesus to pave the way for the Saviour. Let Father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise, And Uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. It is a direct attack on Thomas Shadwell, another prominent poet of the time.
And he predicts a similar cannibalistic civil war if Shaftesbury and his cronies succeed, for all will want a piece of the power, and none will be constrained by law. In those he can be famous and torture words in thousands of ways. My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung When to King John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way, With well tim'd oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd. But this poem is filled with so many perplexing ambiguities, as especially Steven N. Jonson's enduring reputation rests on his comedies written between 1605 and 1614. He returned to favorites, such as Aeneis, for example, he occasionally opens up the couplet rather than, like Pope, closing it virtually all the time.
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