The Political Nature of Dryden's Mock-Heroic Satire 'Mac Flecnoe' Amelia Coen College

‘Age has rusted what the poet writ/ Worn out his language and obscur’d his wit.’ (JOESEPH ADDISON)

Within the quote under consideration, Addison asserts that within the Restoration period the skill and rhetoric of the English poet had diminished and had become stale and lifeless in comparison to the works of poets in the Renaissance and Classical periods. However, this is a notion that is also explicitly expressed within the poetic works of John Dryden, perhaps due to his supposed duty as Poet Laureate to make a sustained effort to reshape national culture by the enrichment of English poetry, a desire that had been promulgated by humanists[1]. It is striking that satire was a particularly common form of literature in Restoration literature; as Paulson states, “the Restoration was the beginning of an age (the age) of English satire, defined by its historical situation following a decade of disastrous civil war and Puritan commonwealth”[2]. Thus it is no surprise that, despite beginning his career as a poet of praise, Dryden heavily relies on the effects of satire within his poems to comment upon the capabilities and styles of his contemporary poets, often directing his attacks at poets with whom he has had personal...