''Fables, Ancient and Modern'' is a collection of translations of classical and medieval poetry by

John Dryden '' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...

interspersed with some of his own works. Published in March 1700, it was his last and one of his greatest works. Dryden died two months later.The Preface to the Fables - Page v volume of miscellanies entitled Fables, consisting chiefly of translations from Chaucer, Ovid, and Boccaccio, with a poetical epistle to his cousin, John Dryden, and the second Ode on St Cecilia's Day, better known as Alexanders Feast. It is dedicated in a prose epistle to the Duke of Ormond, and contains a verse dedication of Palamon and Arcite to the Duchess of Ormond.

Background

After the deposition of his patron James II in 1688, Dryden turned to translation to provide himself with a steady income. Dryden’s education at the

Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Hea ...

had provided him with an excellent grounding in translation, which was a conventional exercise at the time. ''Fables, Ancient and Modern'' contains translations of the First Book of Homer's ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...

'', eight selections from Ovid's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...

'', three of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ''

Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus ...

'' (and an imitation from the Prologue on "The Character of a Good Parson"), the later medieval poem '' The Flower and the Leaf,'' which he thought was by Chaucer, and three stories from

Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was some ...

. The volume also contains a number of Dryden's own works, including "Alexander’s Feast" and an impressive preface in which he lauds Chaucer, calling him “the Father of English poetry”. All the translations are in his characteristic

heroic couplet A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the ''Legend of ...

, which uses alexandrines and triplets to vary the movement. Dryden aimed to increase the English people’s literary reputation by appropriating the greatest traditions in literature and developing them into new genres. The English public were eager recipients of his translations, and saw them as connecting English literature with the great works of the past. The Fables were greatly admired throughout the 18th century, and their form and versification were imitated by John Keats in "Lamia." An interesting feature of the preface is that Dryden did not understand Chaucer's

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

prosody and dismissed his versification as irregular, because Middle English pronunciation was not properly understood at the time. In fact, since Dryden was working with

Thomas Speght Thomas Speght (died 1621) was an English schoolmaster and editor of Geoffrey Chaucer. Life He was from a Yorkshire family, and matriculated as a sizar of Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1566, graduating B.A. in 1570, and M.A. in 1573. At Cambridge he w ...

's extremely corrupt edition of Chaucer (printed overleaf from the translations in the California edition), and "The Flower and the Leaf" is prosodically unlike the poems by Chaucer, he couldn't possibly have scanned Chaucer even if he had assigned the correct Middle English values.

References

External links

Jena Trammell, Anderson College, ''Fables Ancient and Modern'' in ''The Literary Encyclopedia''.

Background

References

External links

Further reading