Contents: Introduction 2

1.2. John Dryden dominated the literary scene of his day.

John Dryden dominated the literary scene of his day that it came to be known as the Age of Dryden. A versatile writer, he wrote poetry, prose and plays, as well as translating great works by the likes of Homer and Virgil so they were available to those who spoke and read English.
Dryden established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry by writing successful satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays with it, and also introduced the alexandrine and triplet. He established a poetic diction appropriate to the heroic couplet that was a model for his contemporaries and became the dominant poetic form in the 18th century.
Dryden died on May 1, 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne's Cemetery. In 1710, he was moved to the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, where a memorial has been erected.

Chapter II. The analysis of historical poem “Annus Mirabilis” by John Dryden.

2.1. Analysis of John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis

With Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 John Dryden published his first major nondramatic poem, and his last major poem utilizing the heroic quatrain format. In addition to its subtitle, The Year of Wonders, 1666,the work contained an explanation beneath the title identifying those wonders: “AN HISTORICAL POEM: CONTAINING THE PROGRESS AND VARIOUS SUCCESSES OF OUR NAVAL WAR WITH HOLLAND, UNDER THE CONDUCT OF HIS HIGHNESS PRINCE RUPERT, AND HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ALBEMARLE, AND DESCRIBING THE FIRE OF LONDON.” Dryden labeled it a historical poem, explaining in his introductory material that written wit “is that which is well defined, the happy result of thought or product of that imagination.” He continues, “But to proceed from wit in the general notion of it to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem, I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of persons, actions, passions, or things.”
Critics have judged Dryden’s critical material almost as valuable as the verses that follow, as he continues explaining his approach by comparing it to that of the classical writers Lucan, VIRGIL, and Ovid. He notes that description must be “dressed in such colours of speech that it sets before your eyes the absent object as perfectly and more delightfully than nature.” He next describes what he calls the three elements representing the “happiness of the poet’s imagination.” The first happiness is “invention, or finding of the thought,” while the second “is fancy, or the variation, driving or moulding of that thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject.” In his opinion, Ovid most famously accomplishes those happinesses. Virgil best accomplishes the third happiness, which is “elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words.” All three remain crucial to proper execution, as “quickness in the imagination” remains responsible for “invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression.”
Dryden well exhibits all of these ideals in his 304 four-line stanzas. He explains that he selects the quatrain “in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble and of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse.” Naturally in telling of miracles, a poet would select a format that imbued a dignified sense of pride. Acknowledging the simplicity of the couplet for easy rhyme, he explains that, by contrast, in the quatrain a poet is challenged to succeed. Poets correctly using this form “must needs acknowledge that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition of the first.”
As Earl Miner discusses, Dryden’s purpose was to encourage readers that the source of England’s woes lay in the past, in the country’s enemies, and even in human nature. This proved important when speaking to a certain faction who blamed the war and the fire on divine retribution. They conceived history as a combination of God’s acts and those of nature, and many believed a natural disaster, such as the fire that devastated London, was the result of God’s displeasure with the restoration of the king to the throne. Portents also proved important, and Dryden combines these ideas in Stanza 16 to suggest that God approved of the English action against the Dutch. He used the figurative language of metaphor to compare two comets sighted in November and December of 1664 to candles, sent by angels to light the English way: