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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 46106 WOODS, Thomas Francis, 1941- DRYDEN AND THE PROPHETIC MODE: AN EXAMINATION OF HIS POETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LIGHT OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY I CONCEPTS OF PROPHECY. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1973 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms,, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan I © 1974 THOMAS FRANCIS WOODS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED DRYDEN AND THE PROPHETIC MODE: AN EXAMINATION OF HIS POETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LIGHT OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CONCEPTS OF PROPHECY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University t _ By Thomas Francis Woods, B.S. in S.S., A.M. ****** The Ohio State University 1973 Reading Committee: Approved By Professor A.E.W. Maurer Professor E.P.J. Corbett Professor Betty Sutton "-'../Advisor' Department of English s For Joan Candle of the Lord iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go to those who helped me at various points during my research: to the librarians of The Ohio State University, Oberlin College, Western Reserve University, and Calvin College; to Professors Kenneth Abbott and John Gable for their aid with passages in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. I owe a large debt of gratitude to many who have shaped my life and work: to my parents, who sacrificed much; to Professor Robert Yackshaw, of John Carroll University, who encourages students to think for themselves; to Professor A.E.W. Maurer, of Ohio State, who shows his students by precept and example what a humane and compelling way of life literary scholarship can be. My greatest debt is acknowledged in the Dedication. VITA September 26, 19^1 .... Born, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1 9 6 3 ..................... B.S. in S.S., John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio 1964-1965 ............... Graduate Assistant in the Library, John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio 1 9 6 3 . A.M., John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio 1 9 6 5 -1 9 6 6 . ............ • Instructor, Department of English, Gannon College, Erie, Pennsylvania 1966-1967 ............... Teaching Associate, Department of English, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 1967-1971 .......... Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971-1973 ............... Assistant Frofessor, Department of English, Grand Valley State Colleges, Allendale, Michigan FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Literature Studies in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature. Professor A.E.W. Maurer v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................... iv VITA ................ v Chapter I. THE PREVALENCE OF PROPHECY............... 1 II. AN ECLECTIC DEFINITION OF THE PROPHET . 22 III. DRYDEN AND PROPHECY: PREDISPOSITIONS AMD PRACTICES .......... 83 IV. JOHN DRYDEN'S PROPHECIES................... I63 CONCLUSION.......................................... 236 APPENDIX . .................................... 240 LIST OF WORKS CITED ................................. 264. CHAPTER I THE PREVALENCE OF PROPHECY "And the reason I said to myself how historical, how traditional, when 1 opened The New York Times and saw Philip Berrigan pouring blood on draft files, the reason I was never put off by the Berrigans' mild attack on property, but rather astounded by their traditionalism, is that such actions have been performed since time immemorial by men with an apocalyptic turn of mind." ^ — Francine du Plessix Gray Mrs. Gray is right, of course: men of an apocalyptic turn of mind always have performed such acts. She herself instances ouch figures as Jeremiah, Jesus Christ, and William Lloyd Garrison. In our own time we have often been forced tc respond to rather apocalyptic attitudes, for we have seen the attempt, among some at least, to identify the seat of the Antichrist at first v/ith Berlin, then with Moscow, and now with Washington. For students of literature, the intriguing question, one being asked more and more often, is the extent to which the apocalyptic— or, more broadly, the prophetic— turn of mind has colored the themes and structures embodied in the works of literary artists. Those "prophetic" writers who come immediately to mind seem to have written at times of crisis, times v/heh doom seemed imminent or when opportunities appeared to open. We think, perhaps, of Langland's Piers Plowman or of Pope's Dunciad or of ’Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Like these writers, Dryden wrote in an age that was, to the people who lived in it, a time both of impending doom and of expanding opportunity. This schizophrenic sense of despair and of hope is reflected in a comment by John Spencer, a contemporary of Dryden, a scholar, and an enemy of the sectaries: The Age in v/hich our lot is fallen is an Age of Action and Expectation, and in such times, prophecies generally take confidence to become publick, being then most grateful to men, usually very impatient of uncertainties where they are hugely concerned. Among the Jews we find Prophets and Oracles especially consulted in times of some public distraction. Besides, 'tis a time of improvement in all humane and divine knowledge, and that happy day seems risen upon us to which ^ God hath promised an increase of Knowledg. As Spencer’s comment indicates, fascination with prophecy— Biblical and modern— was intimately bound up with the hope and despair that seventeenth-century Englishmen felt concerning their times. This fascination— which was manifested in a number of ways— evidently was caused by two beliefs held by many during the period: a belief that England was a new, Christianized, Israel; a belief that the apocalyptic books of the Bible predicted the history of Christianity. The intense interest that prophecy held for the seventeenth- century English is discernible in political discussions during the Interregnum, in sermons and popularizing works of scriptural exegesis, and in scholarly writings. During the Interregnum the English heard much about apocalyptic prophecy from radicals in the Army. (Of course, from the Puritan preachers and in Foxe's Actes and Monuments the English had been hearing for some time about the dangers of the papist Antichrist and of the coming of 3 the New Jerusalem; the movement of some Puritans to the New World constituted an attempt to escape the former and find the latter. ) During the debates in the Army Council after Charles I was captured, Colonel Goffe, who was aligned with the Fifth Monarch Men, argued that Charles I should be deposed on the grounds that the king had been doing the work of Antichrist. Goffe argued that the king's title, Defender of the Faith, and that the Anglican prayer acknowledging the king of England's absolute power, were signs of the Mystery of Iniquity, of Antichrist: "Now Jesus Christ his work in the last days is to destroy this mystery of iniquity . "; furthermore, Revelation says "That in this v/ork of Jesus Christ he if shall have a company of Saints to follow him." John Lilburne, too, argued in council and in pamphlet after pamphlet, for policies based on Daniel and Revelation. His vision of the New Jerusalem was somewhat secularized, however; he sought, says Haller, "not personal conversion but the general good. The struggle of Christ's redeemed ones became a struggle for the■redemption of the state. The holy community, the New Jerusalem, came to be conceived rather as a going community of free citizens than a withdrawn though visible congregation of the elect." In and out of jail, fighting for Parliament but opposing prelacy, Lilburne was widely popular, in part because his fellow Puritans believed with him that the struggle between Christ and Antichrist was about to be 5 consummated. Widespread belief in the nearness of this consum­ mation engendered the career of James Naylor, "The ;vuaker Jesus," and inspired the last gasp of the Interregnum, the desperate rising of the Fifth Monarchy Men in January, l66 l.^ k Those Englishmen who were made conscious of apocalypse and ordinary prophecy by events could read about them in sermons, tracts, and books published during both the Interregnum and the Restoration.