|
COPYRIGHT 2000 www.wmich.edu/compdr
Michael Werth Gelber. The Just and the Lively: The Literary Criticism of John Dryden. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. x + 342. $59.95.
The title of Michael Werth Gelber's book is drawn from John Dryden's working definition of a play in An Essay of Dramatick Poesie, published in 1667, in which he describes a play as ideally encompassing "A just and lively Image of Humane Nature, representing its Passions and Humours, and the Changes of Fortune to which it is subject; for the Delight and Instruction of Mankind" (Works of John Dryden, 17:15). Gelber traces this critical formula through John Dryden's dramatic criticism, focusing on "Dryden's abiding attempt to reconcile opposing strains in literature (the just and the lively), along with the mental faculties (judgment and imagination) in which they originate" (1). The "just" and the "lively" soon double for a variety of competing aesthetic claims and literary traditions. At different points in Gelber's study, the "just" and the "lively" embody the rival claims of (Jonsonian) critical judgment and (Shakespearean) imagination, Jonsonian humours comedy and Shakespearean romance, continental French classicism and native English tragicomedy, the classical unities and the centrifugal romance plot, reason and...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
