Dryden

Pre-reading exercises
1- Maybe the language is different because as we know language that prevail in Chaucer’s times was
Middle English. The society, in my opinion also changed, by that time because Chaucer was one of
the first who started to write in English, as I know, and common people didn’t know what is poetry,
only wealth people could read. By the Dryden’s life the literacy was allowed almost to all people.
2- The meter that Chaucer used in writing The Canterbury Tales is iambic pentameter.
3- He says that his verse is not harmonious to us/
4- By that time this kind of verse was normal and harmonious to ears of those people
5- “He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature…’’;
6- He says that Chaucer very skillfully described the heroes of the Canterbury Tales, their characters,
social position, manners, humour , all pilgrims were severally distinguished from each other.
7- In my opinion between the words of Dryden we can notice not only criticism but also motives of
competition. I think that literary heritage of that period is very valuable, even if the language is
different and may be quite incorrect, for us, these works are an important sketch of how people of
that time lived and treated life.
Aphra Behn
Oronooko, or the Royal Slave
1- The Africans considered as non-human, they were colonized and were ought to work to death,
as it was cheaper to purchase another slave than to keep one alive.
2- Maybe because West Indies territories including Surinam was colonized by Britain and the area
of the Caribbean was an important because slaves worked on different plantations, the grew
different food products and then used sea space for trade and transportation of products.
Post-Reading
1- He was well educated, wise, brave, and very beautiful man.
2- Firstly, it’s that he was educated as we know it was hard for African people, Oroonoko has
extreme blackness (‘His Face was not of that brown rusty Black which most of that Nation
are, but a perfect Ebony, or polished Jet’), as well as a Roman nose and straightened hair.
His African heritage is combined with European ideas of masculine beauty and nobility. The
color of his skin does not prevent him from being beautiful, wise and handsome. Even if he
is different, he may be more humane than the other white people.
3- Oroonoko is tied to a whipping post, where he is slowly dismembered and murdered.
Oroonoko’s family died because they were threatened with the prolonged suffering of
slavery, while Oroonoko died trying to free himself and get revenge on the man who cursed
him to the life as a slave.
This image displays one of the many forms of punishment that slaves had to go through.
This painting can evoke an emotional response for those who view it because it shows the
aftermath of a cruel punishment that someone wrongly endured.
4- By smoking a pipe while the executioner slowly cuts him up, he proves his boldness and
courage even through passive action, he didn't even whimper in pain/
5- Fortunately, there is no slavery in over times, also African people have equal rights with the
white people.
John Bunyan
Vanity fair
1- Beelzebub , Apollyon, and Legion
2- it shows that people could buy anything and pretend to be kings, land owners, etc.
therefore the name is Vainty fair.
3- Maybe Celestial City means the heavenly Jerusalem.
4- -
 5- They didn’t wanted to buy anything except the truth
6- They should die for the abuse and for deluding the men of the fair
7- The Faithful was faithful to god, and he didn’t he did not succumb to temptation, and
after tortures he ascended to heaven.
After you read
2-the truth/ their values are the word of God
3- Because they were clothed with kind of cloth that was different from that traders. And they
spoke on the other language.
4- They stayed repeated that they want to buy truth, and even when the inhabitants of that city
mocked them, they remained patient and kind for them
5- This city may represent our society and peoples, who blame each others, and live in lie, they do
not accept people who live according to the laws of God, and it may also show the life of Jesus
who succumbed to the same fate.
6- Vanity Fair invites us to contemplate the pervasiveness of human strife—and the damage that
our egotism and self-delusion do every day. At the heart of Vanity Fair is the ambition to
acquire social standing, money, love, economic success, and more, even though the actions the
characters take in pursuit of their ambitions rarely lead to happiness.
John Milton
Areopagitica
1- Massacre
2- “Who destroys a good book, kills a reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in the
eye… ”
3- Mostly he consider the Government in censorship,
4- Many writers and poets described their political views between allegories and metaphors
and censorship or Licensing omitted that things because they did’t noticed such a literary
devices;
5- He didn’t addressed straight to the government or about censorship but between the lines
we can understand the hidden information about politic.
6- Violence, brutality, different sects…