Dryden's Final Poetic Mode: The Fables
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Authors
Dryden, John
Reverand, Cedric D.
Issue Date
1988
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
This book seems to me to be a typical example of American literary criticism in the late Twentieth Century. Since it concerns the only fable in the collection, one portion of particular interest to Aesopic fable researchers will be the section on Dryden's The Cock and the Fox, which is his rendition of Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale with significant attention paid to the added or expanded passages vis-à-vis Chaucer's text. Reverand sees the story as whirling ideals and principles around in a carnival fun house (155). There are legitimate competing viewpoints that vie for our assent, but we are knotted up in laughter. The inversions already in Chaucer are extended. Dryden's expansions and additions have to do particularly with woman, flattery, and poetry. As to the latter, even Dryden the poet is implicated in the parody on singers like Chanticleer's father, for Dryden too is a singer. A key part of the story is Chanticleer's citing and mistranslating of the statement mulier est hominis confusio. The cock translates Woman is to Man his Soveraign Bliss (158). The section concludes with this sentence: The result, rather than being disquieting, is exhilarating contradiction, an ironic chaos that playfully keeps the reader off-balance and laughing heartily at the contradictory game.
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University of Pennsylvania Press
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Identifier
5172 (Access ID)