Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry: The Art of Disguise

by Steven N. Zwicker

Overview

This study of Dryden's poetic career addresses the nature of covert argument in an age of violently contested political and religious issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691641829
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #543
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

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Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry

The Arts of Disguise

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By Steven N. Zwicker

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06618-9

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CHAPTER 1

Language as Disguise

POLITICS AND POETRY IN THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Political thought of the later seventeenth century is often studied as the history of and ideologies implied by such words as "property," "liberty," and "prerogative." Nor is it surprising that students of political thought should have isolated these terms for special attention; they appear prominently and repeatedly in the writing and recorded speech of nearly every political actor of the age. In fact, they appear so frequently and in such contradictory contexts that we must wonder not only what meaning such words had but if indeed they had any meaning at all, or rather if meaning was their most important function. Since the study of political language often stresses its conceptual character to the neglect of the polemical circumstances of its expression, I should like here to redress the balance. My intention in doing so is to supplement what is already understood about meaning with an argument about polemic, about the character of such key words as "property" and "liberty" and such central terms of political self-definition as "moderation" not exactly as noise but as reflexive response, as the invocation of a nearly uniform set of calling cards whose presentation seems to have been demanded of all those engaged in political discourse in the later seventeenth century. I am concerned, then, with the extent to which key words in the later seventeenth century are dysfunctional as a description of behavior and belief; I am concerned, in other words, with lying.

Scattered widely through the political documents of this age are indicators of moderation, dispassion, flexibility, and compromise. The words "enthusiasm" and "fanaticism" are frequently used as terms of slander and abuse, implying as they do extremity and rigidity in politics and religion. Yet the years between the return of Charles II and the end of the century yield little real evidence of moderation and dispassion; they are, in fact, years marked by a high pitch of verbal abuse, by steady threats to civic stability from extremes of the left and right, by political dissension and political polarities. The legacy of the civil wars was an ineradicable partisanship which turned in the later decades of the century to bitter party politics and an equally powerful denial of partisanship and party in obeisance to a fiction of patriotic conformity to civic stability. Politics in these years became a spectacle of men declaring moderate goals, often engaging in immoderate designs, apprehending such deceit, and hurling at one another accusations of disguise and masquerade.

Wing's Short-Title Catalogue gives some evidence for my contention. Under such headings as "true," "faithful," "plain," and "character" fall a very large number of titles purporting to be documents of political analysis and political revelation. Indeed, the sheer number of these entries raises a question of whether there is any literature so wholly given over to unmasking and unveiling, to the discovery of hidden character and true motive as the political pamphlet of the later seventeenth century. Wing's entries for "character" include, for example, such items as "The character of a popish successor," "The character of a biggoted prince," 'The character of a protestant Jesuit," "The character of an agitator," "The character of an antimalignant," "The character of a modern sham-plotter," 'The character of a church-papist," "The character of two protestants in masquerade." And first-word entries locate only the most obvious and most accessible source for such language. In an atmosphere so highly charged with suspicion, the very expression of political opinion was taken as a sign of party, sect,, or political obligation. Accusations of covertness and deceit are so widespread that the artless denial of partisanship had itself become an automatic and a nearly pointless gesture. Honesty and politics were virtually exclusive conditions.

Nor is political masquerade confined to broadside and pamphlet. The most important crisis of the age, the most significant treaty of the later seventeenth century, and the most far-reaching political revolution in this age of revolutionary change are themselves indisputable and brilliant examples of masquerade, of the nation caught in its every turn and gesture by the habits and compulsions of deceit. The Popish Plot was in large part the incredible fiction of one man playing on the political gullibility of the nation; the Treaty of Dover was a double bluff hinged on secret clauses; and the Glorious Revolution was carried off by men willing to pretend that James II had abdicated and that William of Orange sailed to England with 12,000 troops merely to supervise free parliamentary elections.

For immediate cause, we need not seek far in explaining why men felt impelled to adopt disguise, to cling tenaciously to the fiction of constitutional conservatism in an age of frequent and violent assault on that constitution. The fact of change itself and the extremes to which political change had run impelled men to seek the stance and language of centrist politics. To what degree men intended to deceive one another by doing so and to what degree they deceived themselves as they justified radical or absolutist solutions to political problems under the pretense of constitutional legalism, it is difficult to say. What is certain, however, is that the number of accusations of such deceit and hence the level of suspicion of politics was very high; we may safely assume that actual examples of concealment were also widespread.

But disguise in Restoration politics, whether self-delusion or deliberate malfeasance, was seldom a matter of shallow cover or simply verbal habit. It was a deeply felt political imperative that influenced the ways in which men used and conceived language. Of course, the study of politics in any age reveals discrepancies between language and behavior. And the presence of disguise as political stance and political theme over the whole of the century is underscored by the striking parallels between earlier and later seventeenth-century political crises, parallels relentlessly uncovered and exploited by Restoration politicians. Moreover, the religious and philosophical skepticism of Donne's satires, the riddling of language and literary conventions in the Songs and Sonnets, the brilliant anatomies of masquerade in the Alchemist and Volpone, and the critique of court life in the lyrics of Gascoigne, Greville, and Raleigh suggest the continuity of the theme and the sophistication with which men had thought on the implications of disguise in the earlier English Renaissance.

And yet the degree to which disguise permeates and defines national life in the Restoration is not fully to be explained by contemplating deceit as a universal in politics or by citing the literary themes and tropes of earlier generations. There are, as well, specific short- and long-range conditions that help account for its character and intensity in these years. The fear and suspicion of politics and of constitutional speculation in the aftermath of the civil wars, and the precarious balance between king and parliament throughout the Restoration, heightened the need for political disguise. Moreover, the long history of conspiracy mentality in post-Reformation England; the transformation of Royalist politics into Royalist conspiracy during the Commonwealth and Protectorate years; the repeated partisan uses of plots and alarms following the return of Charles II; and the Jacobite conspiracies and steady threat of counterrevolution in the last decade of this century sharpened both the accusations and awareness of disguise in national politics.

Political revolution and the repeated fears of such revolution drove men to the exigencies of disguise, but revolution in the seventeenth century was not confined to politics. Not only was there a fundamental and self-conscious change in political relationships over the course of this century, there occurred, as well, a revolution in language theory that changed the ways in which men thought about language. The revolution in the theory of meaning turned language from divine fiat to arbitrary social pact, heightening men's awareness of the often inconvenient alignment of words and things and allowing new resolution to such troubling imperfections. At the beginning of this century, language theorists — nor were they alone — acknowledged such imperfection yet insisted on the God-given integrity of words and things. By the end of the century, many of those who speculated on the nature of language were willing to assert that this relationship was arbitrary, that there was "no divine ordinance and governance of language." Hobbes had so insisted at mid-century, and in 1690 Locke described the connection between words and things as a "perfectly arbitrary Imposition." Locke did not intend "irrational" to follow from "arbitrary"; the thrust of language theory throughout this century was to codify and systematize, to reduce error, confusion, and ambiguity. Such was the aim of the Royal Society; and the work of both Adamic theorists and those who argued against innatist principles was meant to rescue language from the babel of hectoring, parsing, allegorizing, and warfare that had reduced words to such confusion.

But it is to simplify the course of political language over the later seventeenth century and the impact of language reform to assume a sudden resolution, a modification of all language in the direction of clarity and precision. In political discourse, language became more rather than less complex; words, the counters of political argument, needed to be weighed more exactly as the impulse to hide and repress became increasingly powerful over the second half of the century. And in the realm of theory, the move toward arbitrary language principles may have been a reaction against the abuses and unsteadiness of language, but it was, to begin with, an assertion of the fundamentally arbitrary character of language itself. The theory of language as arbitrary sign aimed at correction not by denying that words had been loosened from things but by acknowledging that those moorings were unsteady, that language was social convenience. How striking that in the later seventeenth century, men should have simultaneously explored the possibilities of construing both the sources and forms of governance and language not as inviolable gifts of heaven, unalterable truths, but as social contract, contingent arrangement. And the presence of both philosophical and political issues, the fact that the heightened drive toward political masquerade took place at a time of intense philosophical speculation on the source, character, and fixity of meaning in language helps us to grasp the singular complexity of disguise in this age. By the close of the century, disguise was at once political cover, an acknowledgment of the profoundly contingent character of political experience, and an effort to negotiate the difficult currents of language and meaning at a time when their relation had undergone a radical change. It is such a set of crosscurrents that we can feel in the debates of the Convention Parliament, in Dryden's complex and brooding translation of Virgil's political epic, and in the delicate and enigmatic lyrics from Fables.

But the Convention Parliament and the strategies of Dryden's late poetry are the climax of a story that began long before the Glorious Revolution. It began, I believe, with the Protestant reform of 1532. The legacy of that reform in England was twofold: a conviction that spiritual history was national destiny — hence the idea of England as Elect Nation — and a dedication to the recovery of the primitive condition of the church and the purity of God's word. The impulse to cleanse and strip bare was turned by practicing reformers into a program of systematic recovery and revelation; sacred language was decoded by translation, priests shorn of cassock and surplice, churches cleansed of false ceremony and idolatrous sign. In such a program of decoding and divesting, it is not difficult to see the political implications of reform or its polemical character. The witch hunt of Protestant reformation endowed seventeenth-century religion and politics with a belief in conspiracy as historical explanation. In the long confrontation with Rome, spiritual impulses became fixed as principles of political perception: the Roman imposition of false signs and ceremonies was but one aspect of an eternal program of deceit. But conspiracy was hardly confined to the explanation of Jesuit intrigue. It was, in fact, a prism through which all events might be filtered, a device for seeing connections among disparate historical experiences and for giving them the shape and coherence of prophetic time. Conspiracy was, in effect, the handmaiden of providence, explaining those temporary defeats and setbacks in the program of godly reform and national salvation. As God spun out the great web of human history, the devil supplied a counterset of plots, alarms, and treasons. Such was Milton's vision of foreknowledge, history, and sin; such was Marvell's strategy in linking prophecy and conspiracy in The First Anniversary; such too was the assumption of innumerable writers of pamphlets and sermons on the civil wars, the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, and the Glorious Revolution.

The one constant in all conspiracy theory was disguise. Only by fraud could conspiratorial aims be effected; only by dissimulation could men carry out concealed and nefarious designs. Such an assumption made it possible to impute intentions where none were expressed and to assign meaning where evidence was incomplete. Given this license, conspiracy theory, like Scripture, had the flexibility to fit all crises; it provided as much comfort to king as to parliament in interpreting the particulars as well as the whole course of the civil wars. None was content to leave those shattering and often inexplicable events in random or mechanical disposition. They were brooded over by Royalists and Parliamentarians, pressed by exegetes of both parties until they could be made to yield a coherent pattern, a narrative guided by the twin forces of providence and conspiracy. Providence needed simply to be endured; but conspiracy in its most obvious symptoms — suspicions and fear — might be countered.

And to such a task the Restoration government turned when in its first order of business, the Act of Oblivion, Charles forbade the use of "any reproach or term of distinction." By such legislation the king would quell mistrust and create circumstances that might lead to forgiveness and political order. The specter of civil disorder and the extremes to which such disorder might run were so disturbing that the fragile structure of civic peace imposed by the restoration of Charles Stuart was erected on foundations of pretended political order and willed forgetfulness. Indeed, the very wording of the Act was an effort at healing and settling by altering and diminishing the past. The most destructive struggle in the history of the state had become, in the Act of Oblivion, "the late differences." With the Act of Oblivion the stage was set for the adoption, almost by reflex, of a language of political discourse that was palliative and normalizing in the face of religious and political conditions that repeatedly led to political crisis through the end of the century.

The first condition of political quiescence was cleansing the political vocabulary; the second was altering and forgetting the past; the third was the reestablishment of civic themes to which all men might adhere, themes of wide ideological appeal: the defense of liberty, the rights of property, and religion by law established, phrases that run like colored threads through the entire fabric of political discourse in this age. Whatever their real political conviction, men paid homage to these common values. At the extremes stood the hated poles of absolutism with its implications of popery and arbitrary government, and republicanism with its associations of regicide and uncontrolled leveling. In the center stood the common good, the ancient constitution with its balance of parliamentary privilege and kingly prerogative. Throughout his reign, Charles made a special effort to fix his identity with the true Protestant faith and with the assertion and maintenance of the laws and liberties of his subjects, a code established in 1660 and repeatedly invoked by Charles, by James II, by William and Mary, by exclusionists and Tory loyalists, by Williamites and non-jurors, indeed by politicians of all stripes and colors.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry by Steven N. Zwicker. Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• List of Figures, pg. viii
• List of Abbreviations, pg. ix
• Acknowledgments, pg. xi
• 1. Language as Disguise, pg. 1
• 2. Tropes and Strategies, pg. 35
• 3. Ambiguities and Uncertainties, pg. 70
• 4. Politics and Religion, pg. 85
• 5. Fables, Allegories, and Enigmas, pg. 123
• 6. Politics and Translation, pg. 177
• Epilogue, pg. 206
• Notes, pg. 209
• Index, pg. 241