Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden
- Editors: Jayne Lewis, Lisa Zunshine
- Pages: x & 197 pp.
- Published: 2013
- ISBN: 9781603291255 (Hardcover)
“The organization of the content across poetry, drama, prose and translation assures a comprehensive approach that is informative and generous of spirit, through an array of examples that resonate with accessibility and relevance.”
—Restoration
Which John Dryden should be brought into the twenty-first-century college classroom? The rehabilitator of the ancients? The first of the moderns? The ambivalent laureate? The sidelined convert to Rome? The literary theorist? The translator? The playwright? The poet? This volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature addresses the tensions, contradictions, and versatility of a writer who, in the words of Samuel Johnson, “found [English poetry] brick, and left it marble,” who was, in the words of Walter Scott, “one of the greatest of our masters.”
Part 1, “Materials,” offers a guide to the teaching editions of Dryden’s work and a discussion of the background resources, from biographies and literary criticism to social, cultural, political, and art histories. In part 2, “Approaches,” essays describe different pedagogical entries into Dryden and his time. These approaches cover subjects as various as genre, adaptation, literary rivalry, musical setting, and political and religious poetry in classroom situations that range from the traditional survey to learning through performance.
Anna Battigelli
Elizabeth Bobo
Thomas F. Bonnell
Jennifer Brady
Margaret Anne Doody
Dianne Dugaw
J. Caitlin Finlayson
Daniel Gustafson
Blair Hoxby
Ann A. Huse
Christopher D. Johnson
Deborah Kennedy
Kathryn Lowerre
Scott R. MacKenzie
Adam Potkay
Will Pritchard
Cedric D. Reverand II
John Richetti
Aaron Santesso
Philip Smallwood
Katie Sullivan
Elliott Visconsi
Kirstin R. Wilcox
Amanda Eubanks Winkler
Preface
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Primary Works
Online Resources, Recordings, and Artwork
Background Materials and Criticism
Further Reading Recommendations
Survey Issues
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction
Poetry
John Dryden’s Trojan Horse: Religio Laici
Dryden the Elegist: “To the Memory of Mr. Oldham” and “To the Pious Memory of . . . Anne Killigrew”
Reading Dryden’s Verse: Generic Control in the Killigrew Ode and Oldham Elegy
Dryden’s Sweet Saint: The Killigrew Ode in the Survey Course
A King and No King: How to Use Dryden’s Engagement of the Reader in Absalom and Achitophel
Absalom and Achitophel in an Eighteenth-Century Survey Course
Restoring Dryden to the Core Curriculum: Groups, Crowds, and the Poetry of Public Occasion
Forward from “Mac Flecknoe”: British Literature, 1660 to the Present
Drama
Introducing John Dryden the Dramatic
Teaching Marriage à-la-Mode in a Course on Restoration Comedy
Teaching Dryden’s Heroic Plays
Teaching the Passions in All for Love
Multimedia Dryden: All for Love and a Performative Baroque Aesthetic
A Potion for Secret Love
“Hither This Way”: Musical Dryden for Nonmusician Students (and Nonmusician Teachers)
“Originally Shakespear’s”: Adaptation, Critique, and All for Love and The Tempest
The State of Innocence and Paradise Lost: The Politics of Adaptation
Prose and Translation
Dryden and Rochester: Tracing Literary Rivalries in Dryden’s Prefatory Texts
Forgetfulness and Authorial Presence in Dryden’s Prose
Teaching Dryden’s Latin Translations: Lucretius, Vergil, and the Honeybee
Questioning Nature: Dryden’s Fables, Ancient and Modern
Notes on Contributors
Survey Participants
Works Cited
Index of Dryden’s Works
Index of Names
“Dryden is a major figure of the Restoration, writing in almost all of its important genres. This volume is a valuable addition to the series.”
—James Evans, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
“[Lewis and Zunshine’s collection] will be of great use to teachers of survey courses whose own special expertise does not include Dryden, and even those of us who teach Dryden every year will find helpful, new, and striking ideas within its pages.”
—RECTR Journal
