Mac Flecknoe John Dryden

In Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, dullness is the defining trait of the mock epic’s “hero”, and decay is employed as a theme and a weapon within the poem, underlined mostly as the decay of wit as the speaker dangles his victim and his reputation from his...

In Dryden’s satirical poem Mac Flecknoe mock heroism is used to convey a scathing view of dullness specifically as it pertains to writers, authority figures such as monarchs, and the unintelligent masses. This technique allows Dryden to convey an...

‘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...