Contents: Introduction 2

CONTENTS:

Introduction 2
Chapter I. Information about John Dryden’s biography 7
1.1. John Dryden’s life and career 7
1.2. John Dryden dominated the literary scene of his day. 11
Chapter II. The analysis of historical poem “Annus Mirabilis” by John Dryden. 12
2.1. Analysis of John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis 12
2.2. Annus Mirabilis Literary Elements 19
2.3. The analitical aspects of the characters of the poem. 21
Conclusion 24
Glossary 26
Bibliography 26

Introduction

Annus Mirabilis is a poem written by John Dryden and published in 1667. It commemorates the year 1666, which despite the poem's name 'year of wonders' was one of great tragedy, involving both the Plague and the Great Fire of London. Samuel Johnson wrote that Dryden used the phrase 'annus mirabilis' because it was a wonder that things were not worse.
The poem contains over 1200 lines of verse divided into 304 quatrains. Each line is ten syllables long, with an 'ABAB' rhyming scheme, a pattern known as a decasyllabic quatrain.
Dryden's poem narrates the events of the Great Fire of London, from its beginning at night in the bakery on Pudding Lane, to its final extinguishment after King Charles II ordered houses to be torn down or blown up with gunpowder to create 'fire breaks' which prevent the flames from spreading.
In the extract above Dryden describes the streets on the first night of the Fire being 'thronged and busy as by day' as people rush to attempt to put out the flames with buckets of water fetched from local churches, and even early fire-engines of the like shown below in an illustration from Solomon de Caus' work of 1615 on mechanical engineering.
Despite the tragic subject matter, Dryden remains optimistic. After the fire is spent, he imagines a new city of London rising from the ashes 'with silver paved, and all divine with gold' which is to last until the 'death of time'.
The Great Fire of London raged from Sunday 2 September to Wednesday 5 September 1666, and destroyed the homes of up to 70,000 ihabitants of the city. The death toll traditionally was thought to be small, with only six deaths recorded. This may, however, be a consequence of the social hierarchy of the time, and deaths of poor Londoners may have gone unnoticed and unrecorded.
The Library's copy of Annus Mirabilis is bound together in one volume with several other booklets including works on Biblical exposition and calendrical measurement. It was donated to the College by Charles Otway, a former Fellow of St John's who donated one of the largest personal collections of books to the College Library.¹
This Special Collections Spotlight article was contributed on 11 June 2014 by Ryan Cronin, Press, Publicity and Communities Officer.
Pronounsation annus mirabilis [ ahn-noos mi-rah-bi-lis; Englishan-uhs-muh-rab-uh-lis ]noun, plural an·ni mi·ra·bi·les [ahn-nee mi-rah-bi-les; English an-ahy-muh-rab-uh-leez, an-ee],Latin. year of wonders; wonderful year.
The title of Dryden's poem, used without capitalisation, annus mirabilis, derives its meaning from its Latin origins and describes a year of particularly notable events. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Dryden's use of the term for the title of his poem constitutes the first known written use of the phrase in an English text.[2] The first event of the miraculous year was the Battle of Lowestoft fought by English and Dutch ships in 1665. The second was the Four Days Battle of June 1666, and finally the victory of the St. James's Day Battle a month later. The second part of the poem deals with the Great Fire of London that ran from September 2–7, 1666. The miracle of the Fire was that London was saved, that the fire was stopped, and that the great king (Charles II) would rebuild, for he already announced his plans to improve the streets of London and to begin great projects. Dryden's view is that these disasters were all averted, that God had saved England from destruction, and that God had performed miracles for England.
Structure
The poem contains 1216 lines of verse, arranged in 304 quatrains. Each line consists of ten syllables, and each quatrain follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, a pattern referred to as a decasyllabic quatrain. Rather than write in the heroic couplets found in his earlier works, Dryden used the decasyllabic quatrain exemplified in Sir John Davies' poem Nosce Teipsum in 1599. The style was revived by William Davenant in his poem Gondibert, which was published in 1651 and influenced Dryden's composition of Annus Mirabilis.This particular style dictates that each quatrain should contain a full stop, which A. W. Ward believes causes the verse to become "prosy".²
Background
Those who subscribe to such beliefs will confidently assert that one of Nostradamus’ many intricately abstruse quatrains foretells the coming of the Great London Fire of 1666. As far as city-wide conflagrations go, the 1666 blaze that made its way across much of London makes the Great Chicago Fire look like a smoldering waste basket by contrast. On the other hand, certain distinct similarities exists between the two great metropolitan wildfires, not the least of which is that both cities rose from the ashes significantly more modern than they had been before which directly led to both Chicago and London taking a more prominent place in their respective societies.
The Great Fire of 1666 ripped a fiery path through London stretching at least 40 miles long, destroying more than 15,000 homes, nearly 100 churches and an unknown quantity of businesses. The cause behind such devastation was easily to determine: all those buildings were constructed of wood and many were lined with tar paper to keep out the famous London rain. Add to this mix the fact that most streets were very narrow and the distance between neighbors close enough to reach out and touch and the fact that London had no organized fire brigade at the time points to such a destructive event as a matter of when and not a matter if.
The task of rebuilding London the day after the fire was finally extinguished looked hopeless, but over the years new buildings of brick or tone replaced the space where wood and tar had once stood a stack of kindling next to a fireplace. The Great London Fire of 1666 also directly inspired the most famous architect of his day, Christopher Wren, to commence work on St. Paul’s Cathedral.
That magnificent temple was not the only phoenix to rise from the ashes of the Great London Fire of 1666. Another inspirational creation owing a debt of genesis of the death rattle of inferno was John Dryden’s epic poetic call to the patriotic spirit of Londoners, Annus Mirabilus Where others views the destruction wrought by the fire as yet more evidence—along with the waste being laid across the city by the Black Plague—as proof that God was punishing the city, Dryden saw in the massive damage caused by the fire the opportunity to cleanse and purify London of its flaws and erect in its wake a much greater metropolis. The fire, as Dryden outlines its path across the city in his poem, could be transformed into a redemptive act of God rather than a punishment from God to provide the opportunity for the salvation of an entire city.
Ultimately, Annus Mirabilus makes it greatest appeal to the patriotic fire still burning among the dying embers of the flames with the suggestion that what appeared to be pure havoc transform into the moment at which England took its rightful and deserved placed as the greatest city in the greatest country destined to lead the world into the future.