Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Dryden's Dramatic Theory and Praxis: Inaugural Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Submitted to the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig
Dryden contends that those things which delight all ages, must have been an imitation of nature. The figures of rhetoric were introduced on account of the effect they had upon the audience. Even catachresis and hyperbole have taken their place among the figures and can be, when used judiciously, of great effect; like the lights and shades in painting, which throw the figures into bolder relief. Figures are principally to be used in passion, since a person does not reason rightly or talk calmly when in a passion, and then figures are natural. But the poet must be guided by a cool discretion, which will forbid anything too extra vagant in this line.
The question of the introduction of supernatural elements into heroic poetry is also discussed, but nothing new is advanced beyond the remarks upon the same subject in the Essay 011 Heroic Plays: the poet has certain liberties; the Scriptures authorize the description of immaterial substances; things above us we describe by comparing them to things we know.
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