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Article: "A greater gust": generating the body in Absalom and Achitophel.
- Article from:
- Papers on Language & Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 2004
- Author:
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When my study of the "normative basis" of Absalom and Achitophel first appeared, it challenged the prevailing interpretation of the poem by arguing that Aristotelian hylomorphism provides a basis for structuring references to the begetting of sons, that the contrasting father-son pairs were crucial to understanding the norms of the satire, that Dryden implies muted criticism of the king's morals while wholeheartedly supporting his politics in the Exclusion Crisis, and that the ethical norm of the poem is contained in the relationship between the figures of Barzillai and his son. Critics whose work focused on the poem as a series of parts--from Dryden's opening lines on ...