John Dryden and Alexander Pope as a Satirists at the point of view of R. J. Ress

 

        *John Dryden*:-

                        John Dryden was one of the most productive of all English writers, greatly admired in his own time and successful in almost every field of literature. He was nicknamed "Glorious John". As a keen realist he welcomed the restoration of king Charles II with a poem, called "Astraea Redux".

                      The most important of Dryden's satires is Absalom and Achitophel, It is not easily understood or appreciated by a reader who is ignorant of the historical event. For the modern reader the whole poem naturally has none of the news like quality which made it so successful when it first appeared. 

  

                      It can still be enjoyed however assistance of notes as one of the most powerful verse satires in the language. His well known heroic couplets be the perfect medium for satirical wit and invective, It was also in Dryden's later satires, like...

• Mac Flecknoe (1682)

• The Medal (1682)

• The Hind and the Panther (1687)

                  

                The Hind and the Panther is chiefly a philosophical poem about religion.

*Alexander Pope*:-

           In the satire of Pope, we can find him attacking individuals of no particular importance to man, who would otherwise have been forgotten. Pope's long satirical poem "The Dunaciad" for instance, is a brilliant attack in Epic style on the almost forgotten poet and dramatis   Dt Colly Cibber, togather with several important writters of even less importance. His Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnol and his various Imitation of Horace are equally brilliant but equally personal in their choice of subjects. In short, when we think of Pope as a 'great' satirist we are admiring his literary skill - his technical mastery - rather than moral purpose.

                 In the prologue to his satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated, Pope's attack on Lord Hervey, in which he attacked aristocratic insolence to his "low" birth. 

 

                Pope's reputation as satirist doesn't depend entirely on the sort of personal attacks which we have just mention. He was also author of "The Rape of The Lock", which is a true masterpiece of light satire, amusing and good - tempered yet not without an element of serious social criticism. The whole poem depicts rich, fashionable and idle society of Pope's time, with court as its centre, in eloborate style of the classical epic, he reduces it to absurdity. This is a cool, witty and detached, so that one sometimes wishes Popo would be angrier about the trivial society he describes. Anger alone however not enough to make good satire, any more than love alone enough is enough to make a good love poem.