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University Micrdffilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8400280 Rauch, Esther Eleze Nettles JOHN DRYDEN’S USE OF CLASSICAL RHETORIC IN "THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA" The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1983 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1984 by Rauch, Esther Eleze Nettles All Rights Reserved JOHN DRYDEN'S USE OF CLASSICAL RHETORIC IN THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Esther Eleze Nettles Rauch, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1983 Reading Committee: Approved By A. E. Wallace Maurer Edward P. J. Corbett Mark S. Auburn Adviser Department of English To Lola Elizabeth Nichols Nettles and Abraham Nettles My Parents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Few people, if any, complete a major scholarly work without the assistance of many other people and institutions. I wish to acknowledge the courteous and friendly assistance rendered to me by the staffs of four libraries: The William Oxley Thompson Library at The Ohio State University, The Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, The Folger Library, Washington, D.C., and the Bodeleian Library, Oxford, England. I wish to thank, also, the people who helped me to bring this study to completion and to cite for special acknowledgement, Professor A. E. W. Maurer, mentor, teacher, confidante, and friend; Mrs. Susan Manning, for reading a very rough manuscript and helping it get clarified; Mrs. Margaret Rocheleau-Shina, Mrs. Alice Pellegrini, and Mrs. Patricia V. Thompson for typing and word-processing the manuscript; and to Rear Admiral Charles F. Rauch, J r ., for providing emotional support, encouraging words, technical assistance in the making of a flow chart diagram, and two travel study grants to Washington, D.C, and Oxford, England. VITA 1979 The Ohio State University, M.A. 1961 Fisk University, B.A. Other Schools Attended The University of Hawaii Prairie View A&M University EXPERIENCE 1981 Maine Maritime Academy Instructor, Composition 1978 The Ohio State University Teaching Associate 1972 The Center for Naval Analyses Manager of Employment, Manager of Professional Staffing 1970 Navy Wifeline, Co-Editor 1968 Praire View A&M University Special Assistant to the Director, Financial Aids 1968 Southwest Texas Job Corps Communication Consultant for Business writing. PUBLICATIONS "Non-Traditional Employment," in Careers for Humanities/ Libera1 Arts Majors: A Guide to Resources, ed. Thoman N. Tryzna (Columbus, Ohio: Humanities Research Group), 1980. "Pornography: A Special Pedagogical Tool for A Special Adult Group," College Composition and Communications. XXXIX (December, 1978), 390-392. HONORS The National Honor Society The Gold Key Honor Society Phi Kappa Phi QUALIFYING EXAMINATIONS Rhetoric, Prof. Edward P. J. Corbett Restoration and Eighteenth Century, Prof. A. E. W. Maurer Nineteenth Century, Prof. Richard T. Martin The Novel, Prof. Arnold Shapiro TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEGEMENTS.................................................................................................................. ii DEDICATION.................................................................................................................................i i i VITA ......................................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................................v ii CHAPTER I. A CURIOUSLY OMITTED BACKGROUND FACT .... ................................... 1 I I . THE TRADITION OF RHETORIC AND POETRY.........................................................13 I II. DRYDEN AND CHARACTERIZATION IN THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA . 47 IV* INVENTIO AND CHARACTERIZATION IN THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA . 68 V. DISPOSITIO AND THE DESIGN OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA . 12 7 VI. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................160 NOTES...............................................................................................................................................165 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................... 191 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 F o rtu n e ...............................................................................................................................106 2 O c c a s io n ..........................................................................................................................110 2 Flow-Chart of The Design of The Conquest of Granada, Part I . 153 vii Chapter I. A Curiously Omitted Background Fact The bases for discussion of Dryden's heroic plays have remained limited to the same few topics adumbrated by Margaret Sherwood in her 1898 work, John Dryden1s Dramatic Theory and P ractice. Sherwood describes the plays as so different "in motif, language, and construction from ordinary drama that a standard of judgment is hard to form for them."^ The plays, she claims, "contain no ruling idea 2 working its way out through character into action." Of his treatment of character, she says that "it is the essay method of dealing with character." Dryden presents character by stating "trait after trait" and illustrating each trait by a fitting anecdote. Sherwood claims that this method of identifying and illustrating by anecdotal repetition is the same method that Dryden uses when he deals with passions as an attribute of character. She concludes that of the characters in the heroic plays, each is a "single trait dominated by passion. Maximin is a ll tyrant; Aureng-Zebe a ll magnanimity; Valeria 3 is incarnate self-renunciation; Almeria is personified revenge." Dryden is motivated, Sherwood decides, by his desire to make a clear statement. The desire to make a clear statement is explained by defining Dryden as a public writer who wrote for particular occasions, who had a sense of public purpose intensified by his official position as poet laureate and historiographer royal. Her summary evaluation of the heroic plays essentially denies the plays their rightful place and status as dramas. Here is what she says: But criticism of Dryden's heroic plays is almost too easy. In s tr ic t sense they are not drama. They lack insight into the tragic forces that bring struggle to life. Without motif to bind the action together, they are also without the unity of clever dramatic structure .... To excuse the sensationalism found in language, theme, and structure on the ground that it appealed to the taste of the age, is not to absolve the critic and the thinker who knew better than his age what was 4 excellent in art. That studies of the heroic plays have not ventured too far beyond these limits can best be demonstrated by noting that Anne T. Barbeau, K. G. Hamilton, and George McFadden, when they write about the heroic plays, make essentially the same claims about them that Sherwood does: Barbeau about Dryden1s treatment of character and Hamilton and McFadden about an evaluation of his motives for writing in the way he did.^ Barbeau asserts that Dryden was not interested in drawing characters who were in any sense "true-to-life." She says that Dryden's characters are "exemplifications of various attitudes concerning the obligations of a son to his parents," and so forth.^ She implies that what appears to be the absence of psychological realism in the characters can be explained
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