John Dryden's celebrated conversion to Roman Catholicism is revealed in this provocative study as the culmination of a lifelong search that began with his youth in an actively Puritan family. Atkin's familiarity with the religious thought of the times allows him to range widely among Dryden's contemporaries and predecessors and to bring a fresh perspective to those key poems in Dryden's religious development: Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther. Through a sensitive reappraisal of all Dryden's texts -- including those less widely known -- Atkins shows that Dryden had a lifelong antipathy for all "priests" of whatever sect, whether pagan or Christian; by concentrating on the theme of Dryden's opposition to the clergy and his efforts toward articulating a faith for the layman, Atkins provides an important new way of tracing and evaluating the changes in Dryden's religious position and, with this perspective, offers a new interpretation of Dryden's conversion.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Dryden's poetry and prose - all the major poems in full, literary criticism, and translations - to give theessence of his work and thinking.John Dryden (1631-1700) was the leading writer of his day and a major cultural spokesman following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. His work includes political poems, satire, religious apologias, translations, critical essays and plays. This anthology includes all the major poems such asMacFlecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel as well as Dryden's classical translations; his versions of Homer, Horace, and Ovid are reproduced in full. There are also substantial selections from Dryden's Virgil, Juvenal, and other classical writers. Fables, Ancient and Modern, taken from Chaucer, Ovid,Boccaccio, and Homer, his last and possibly greatest work, also appears in full.

John Dryden, Poet Laureate to Charles II and James II, was one of the great literary figures of the late seventeenth century. This Companion provides a fresh look at Dryden s tactics and triumphs in negotiating the extraordinary political and cultural revolutions of his time. The newly commissioned essays introduce readers to the full range of his work as a poet, as a writer of innovative plays and operas, as a purveyor of contemporary notions of empire, and most of all as a man intimate with the opportunities of aristocratic patronage as well as the emerging market for literary gossip, slander and polemic. Dryden s works are examined in the context of seventeenth-century politics, publishing and ideas of authorship. A valuable resource for students and scholars, the Companion includes a full chronology of Dryden s life and times and a detailed guide to further reading.

Reproduction of the original: All for Love by John Dryden

American, British, and Australian scholars of English gathered at Yale University in October 2000 to mark the tercentenary of the British writer's death. Their 14 essays explore such aspects as modernity and exclusion in his The Spanish Fryar, his translation of Juvenal's Sixth Satire, and his Hamlet as an unwritten masterpiece. Distributed by Associated University Presses. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

This book is a concise introduction, drawing on the latest research, to the life and work of the most celebrated English poet of the late seventeenth century. It is unusual in stressing not only the poet's responses to the events, personalities, and ideas of his own day, but also the way in which his work engages (in a far more speculative and pluralistic way than is often supposed) with human issues and dilemmas of permanent concern: the relation of human to animal and inanimate nature; the forces, internal and external which serve to ennoble, enrich and confound human endeavour; the capacities and limits of human reason; the relations between the sexes. Dryden emerges from this study as, simultaneously, a 'man of his times' and a writer with important things to say to us all.

This is the final volume in The Works of John Dryden and the last volume of poetry written by Dryden before he died in 1700.