Department of English, Uttara University

1. Preface to
the Fables
By John Dryden (1631-1700)
WELCOME TO MY PRESENTATION

2. Rabeya Sultana Dolan
ID-F21533111016
Batch-38th

3. SHORT BIOGRAPHY
 John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator,
and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668.
 Dryden was born at the vicarage of Aldwinkle in Northampshire on August 9,
1631 to a family of rising Puritan gentry. His parents name is Erasmus Dryden
and Mary Pickering.
 He Graduating with a BA in 1654 at Trinity College, Cambridge.
 On 1 December 1663 Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard & He had three
sons.
 Died on 12 May in 1700.

4. CAREER
 His father’s death in June 1654, he moved to London to acquire work with
Cromwell's Secretary of State, John Thurloe.
 His first play The Wild Gallant appeared in 1663, wich was not successful.
 During the 1660s and 1670s, theatrical writing was his main source of income.
 He led the way in Restoration comedy, his best-known work being Marriage à
la Mode (1673), as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy.
 his dramatic career began when he published Annus Mirabilis.
 He wrote almost 30 plays and was one of the great dramatists of his time.
 All for Love, A Mphitryon, Secret Love, The Indian Emperor, The Indian
Queen, The Rival Ladies, Fables: Ancient and Modern are some of his great
plays.
 As a translator, he made great literary works in the older languages available to
readers of English.

5. Philosophy of Dryden
 Dryden was the dominant literary figure and influence of his age
 In his poems, translations, and criticism, he established a poetic diction
appropriate to the heroic couplet.
 Criticizes the then society through his writings
 His writing style was unique, mostly employing daily patterns and rhythms
used in everyday speech.

6. AGE OF DRYDEN
 The period from 1660 to 1700 is designated as the Age of Restoration or the Age of
Dryden
 In that time, his poetry set the tone of the new age in achieving a new clarity and in
establishing a self-limiting, somewhat impersonal canon of moderation and good taste.
 Dryden defined the stylistic restraint, compression, clarity, and common sense that he
exemplified in his own poetry and that he showed to be lacking in much of the poetry
of the preceding age, particularly in the exuberant.
 In his heroic tragedies The Conquest of Granada (1670) and All for Love; or, The
World Well Lost (1678), a rewriting of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in the new
taste, Dryden showed a different and not always satisfying side of his talent and
exemplified the dominant quality of all Restoration tragedy.

7. ANALYSIS OF FABLES
 Fable: A fable is a brief tale conveying a moral. Usually, in fables beast and
birds are made to act and speak like human beings. But Dryden’s Fables are in
no sense fables, but rather tales in verse. They are verse paraphrases of tales
by Chaucer, Boccaccio and Ovid.
 The Background: In the Preface to the Fables, Dryden explains the
background and project of the Fables. He explains how the project was taken
up on a very modest scale which however expanded to the full size of a
book. Metaphorically, Dryden says that he had only planned to build a lodge,
but ended up with a house.
 Dryden began with a translation of the first book of Homer’s Iliad. This was
done as an experiment. However it was a great success. The success gave him
confidence and he soon turned to another writer,Ovid. He translated into
simple English Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. These experiments and the success
he got, encouraged him to choose five tales from Chaucer’s famous work
“Canterbury Tales”. Later he translated three of Boccaccio’s Tales. At the end
of the preface Dryden says that he makes no claims as to the merits of his
translation. He leaves it to the readers to decide.