드라이든의 문학비평과 비교방법론

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the comparative method in the practical field of John Dryden’s literary criticism. John Dryden(1631-1700) is properly considered as "the father of English criticism" and "the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition" by another great literary critic, Samuel Johnson in the Eighteenth century. Dryden was truly a man of letters in the latter part of the Seventeenth century England:a poet, playwright, critic, and translator. He wrote various kinds of writings in the great tradition of English Empiricism. He was a so-called poet-critic who was not a purely literary critic but an utterly practical critic. He wrote his literary criticism only on the basis of his various experiences as a writer in general. He was never a theoretical or speculative critic, compared with the prescriptive French critics in the age of Neoclassicism in Europe. Dryden deals with his literary discourse by comparing Greek and Roman writers with Italian, French and English poets. Dryden’s comparative method enhances awareness of difference, from country to country and age to age. Dryden tries to establish the proper identity of English literature in the whole history of European literature from the Greek period to his contemporary period. His method of comparison in his literary criticism hada strong influence on the later English literary critics such Samuel Johnson and T. S. Eliot. Dryden set up the great tradition of comparative method in the history of English literary criticism. Now our era is the age of glocalism and cosmopolitanism, when the ethics of comparison is badly needed. The comparative method in literary criticism could be the comparative criticism in the widest sense of comparative literature. It is the very great legacy of John Dryden’s criticism for the 21st century.