How Biblical Motifs Enhance the Political Allegory in 'Absalom and Architophel' Sutirtho Roy College

John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681), a verse satire based in Restoration England, has led Edward Albert to dub him “the champion of monarchy”. Indeed, the poet’s use of two Biblical narratives (the tale of David and Absalom and the fable of the prodigal son) seems to further his political agenda – but the text transcends a linear representation of socio-cultural and political events through its satirical brilliance and literary merit. Through Dryden’s address ‘To the Reader’, it emerges as a political poem with equal emphasis on ‘political’ and ‘poem’.

Political satire, as a literary mode to express discontent or critique existing institutions, finds special relevance in the hands of writers in the Restoration Period, writing from a country torn by Civil War and broken into numerous religious and political sects. Organised governments had been the targets of such satire from Aristophanes to Juvenal and Horace to even Swift’s depiction of “that animal called man” – however Dryden, as the Royal Historian and Poet-Laureate, exercises poetic craft to secure the King’s victory over the Parliament. He borrows the heroic couplet, not to mock “mighty contests” which rise from “trivial things” but to associate contemporary...