Past and Present in Dryden's "Fables"

Abstract

a more general revival of interest in political history on the part of literary scholars. Recent studies have pointed out many levels of partisan expression in the works of Dryden's final decade, when the old poet, cast out of the laureate's post and living by his wits, contrived to communicate his Jacobite principles by devices ranging from subtle mistranslation to overt defiance.' I have embraced this mode of interpretation by tracing the political aspects of Dryden's translations of Juvenal and Persius and by arguing for the presence of Jacobite innuendo in King Arthur.2 My topic here, however, is history in a larger sense. Always aware of parallels between past and present events, which he dramatized in the biblical and mythical allusions of all of his court panegyrics and in the sustained typological narrative of Absalom andAchitophel, Dryden in his final years took comfort in imagining history moving in grand cycles. Without necessarily claiming deep belief in typology or in the cyclical nature of history, he selected for translation and included in his original poems a number of passages in which the end of a life, a century, or an age resembles its beginning. In Fables, these patterns include the poet's own life and poetic career, the politically tumultuous century just coming to its end, and the whole of Western literary history.