"An Old Age Is Out": The New Dryden and the Arts of the Restoration

December 1-2, 2000

arranged by

Maximillian E. Novak and Jayne Lewis, UCLA

at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

The year 2000 marks the tercentenary of Dryden's death, and thus potentially the sealing of his status as a poet of old; both our programs, though, are intended as testaments to his perpetual newness. Indeed, we plan to conjure a poet with extraordinary powers of self-renewal-one of the happier corollaries, perhaps, of an imagination forged at a radically contradictory historical moment, or of a poetic voice both mixed and vigorous, authoritative and equivocal. In any case, we take as a compliment Samuel Johnson's verdict that Dryden was "always another and the same," and we expect that the papers presented at these conferences will show just how many different Drydens were at work between 1660 and 1700. To explore the innovative Dryden from recent critical perspectives is to chart new directions in Dryden studies. To this end, our first program, The New Dryden: Poetry, Politics, and Society, will be devoted to Dryden's relationship to the social and political emergencies of post-Commonwealth, late Stuart, and Williamite politics and society. Our second program, An Old Age Is Out: The New Dryden and the Arts of the Restoration (December 1-2, 2000), will place Dryden at the center of various cultural transformations, particularly in the realms of art and music. Treating the poet as shaper, as gauge, and as artifact of a society caught between old monarchy and new empire, ancient models and modern modalities, will allow us to celebrate his exceptional relevance to our own life on the cusp of epochs. For, as Dryden's Secular Masque of 1700 observes, for us too "an old Age is out," and as true lovers of Dryden we embrace a "time to begin a new."

Conference Program

Friday, December 1

10:00 a.m. • workshop

Jennifer Brady, Rhodes College

Dryden, Melancholy, and the Reception of Shakespeare in the 1670s

Blair Hoxby, Yale University

John Dryden's Tragic Strain

12:00 noon • lunch

1:30 p.m. • workshop

Cedric D. Reverand II, University of Wyoming

Dryden and the Canon: Absorbing and Rejecting the Burden of the Past

Dianne Dugaw, University of Oregon

"The Rational Spirituall Part": The Music Dramas of Dryden and Purcell

3:30 p.m. • reception

Saturday, December 2

10:00 a.m. • workshop

Deborah Payne Fisk, American University

Theatrical Dryden

James Grantham Turner, University of California, Berkeley

"Thy lovers were all untrue"

12:00 noon • lunch

1:30 p.m. • workshop

James A. Winn, Boston University

Dryden's Songs

[Discussion with musical illustration: Professor James A. Winn of Boston University, the final speaker of the conference and a flutist, will provide an account, with live musical illustrations, of Dryden's long career as a writer of theatrical songs to demonstrate the poet's lifelong ambivalence about the power of music. Musical selections will include "Ah, Fading Joy" (from the Indian Emperour, music by Pelham Humfrey); "The Soft, Complaining Flute (from A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687, music by Giovanni Baptista Draghi); and "Two Daughters of This Aged Stream" (from King Arthur, music by Henry Purcell). Professor Winn will be joined by Ellen Judy Wilson, flute; Susan Judy and Jacqueline Warwick, sopranos; and faculty and students of UCLA's Department of Musicology.]

Registration deadline: November 22
Please note that space is limited and registration closes when capacity is reached.
To register, please fill out the form below and mail it to the Center address.