critisim

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John Dryden (1631- 1700)

Dryden is a neo-classical poet. He is the most important poet in his time. He is responsible of the improvement of the meter and the refinement of the proper language for poetry at his time.

In his most famous work "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy", he uses a very unique structure in wring it. It is written in a dialogue form in which four people discuss many things about poetry:

- Nature: should poets imitate nature immediately or they should imitate great authors of the classical age; such as Homer and by imitating those famous authors, poets imitate nature. In discussing this, Dryden shows the benefit of the two both.

- The three unites, place, time and action, which he believes poets must follow.

- The language of the play which he believes it must be on proper speech.

- Issues of decorum that is should the violent acts appear on the stage or not. He ends with saying that violent acts should not appear on the stage.

- The differences between English and French theater. He believes that English is better because of its 1- diversity, 2- its use of the stage and 3- its Shakespearian tradition.

- The important of writing with the rhyme rather than blank verse although he writes by using blank verse in his later works.

Finally, formality, clarity, order, decorum, elegance, cleverness and wit should be the characteristics of literary work.

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