An Analysis of the political approach of John Dryden’s plays and their appraisal through the ideas of Edmund Burke /

Download

index.pdf

Date

2014

Author

Dore, Peter Jeremy

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

289
views

223
downloads

This thesis is an analysis of the political approach of the plays of John Dryden and an analysis of it through the ideas of Edmund Burke. This work establishes that Dryden had a political program, it being the use of his literary work to promote the concept of monarchical legitimacy so as to support Charles II and the legitimate succession to his rule. Dryden engages in this program in his dramas by depicting the legitimate rulers within them as exceptionally virtuous. He additionally uses his plays to make further political points within the framework of his program. In order to explain the relevance of the political concerns of Dryden, this thesis relates the historical and theoretical context in which Dryden wrote about kingship. It also provides an examination of his political program within his poetry and playwriting during the reign of Charles II before making a more detailed analysis of four specific plays. After this analysis, this thesis then analyses the political approach of Dryden through the ideas of the conservative political thinker Edmund Burke. By using the ideas of Burke, it is revealed that whilst he would concur in the main with Dryden on his political program, there is in fact a flaw within it. Burke shows that by coupling the idea of legitimacy with another concept, it weakens the concept of legitimacy itself. Hence Dryden, by linking virtue and legitimacy, actually undermines his whole political program.

Subject Keywords

Dryden, John,, Burke, Edmund, English literature, English literature

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12617601/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/23788

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The analysis of the theme of anger in john Osborne's: The analysis of the theme of anger in John Osborne's : look back in anger, inadmissible evidence, watch it come down Tecimer, Emine; Çileli, Fatma Meral; Department of English Literature (2005) This thesis analyses the theme of anger in John Osborne̕s plays, namely Look Back in Anger, Inadmissible Evidence and Watch it Come Down, in terms of frustration-aggression hypothesis and psychoanalytic theory. It investigates the reasons for the protagonists̕ rage and the ways the characters reflect their anger onto other people.
A bakhtinian analysis of William Golding’s rites of passage: heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque in the novel Tuğlu, Utku; Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M.; Department of English Literature (2011) This thesis analyzes William Golding’s Rites of Passage using a detailed examination of the Bakhtinian concepts of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque to investigate the points of mutual illumination and confirmation between Bakhtin’s ideas and Golding’s novel. Therefore the method of analysis is divided between a close study of Rites of Passage and an equally close examination of Bakhtin’s ideas. The Bakhtinian concepts studied in this thesis are central to his idea of language and theory of the...
An analysis of metafictional self-reflexivity in laurence sterne's the life and opinions of tristram shandy and William Gass' willie masters' lonesome wife Okuroğlu, Şule; İçöz, Nursel; Department of English Literature (2005) This thesis evaluates metafictional self-reflexivity, and presents it within the scope of certain structuralist and post-structuralist approaches especially by referring to William Gass̕ definition of metafiction and Raymond Federman̕s theories on the devices of metafiction. Then aspects of the works of William Gass̕ Willie Master̕s Lonesome Wife and Laurence Sterne̕s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy are discussed within this framework.
A Freudian study of the The Grass Is Singing, Aylak Adam and The White Hotel Büyü, Gül; Coşkunoğlu Bear, Ayten; Department of English Literature (2007) This thesis studies Peter Shaffer’s use of time as a technique for creating alienation effect. In order to provide the audience with a questioning role, Shaffer primarily employs historical and mythical past as elements of pastness in the Brechtian sense. Shaffer also innovatively contributes to the formation of alienation effect with spatial time achieved through the coexistence of past and present. Distancing the audience in time, the playwright leads them to adopt a critical viewpoint so that they can qu...
Existentialism and Samuel Beckett’s two plays: endgame and happy days Tan, Tijen; İçöz, Nursel; Department of Foreign Language Education (2007) This thesis carries out an analysis of the plays by Samuel Beckett, Endgame and Happy Days. It achieves this by exploring how the playwright’s characterization, setting and use of language in these plays display his tendency to employ some existentialist concepts such as despair, anxiety and thrownness on the way to authenticity. This study argues that there are some similarities between Beckett’s two plays and Existentialism, and some characters in both plays display the existentialist man who is looking f...

Citation Formats

P. J. Dore, “An Analysis of the political approach of John Dryden’s plays and their appraisal through the ideas of Edmund Burke /,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2014.