"The muses' empire": Poetic authority in seventeenth-century panegyric.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the nature of poetic authority in seventeenth-century panegyric. I reject the assumption that panegyric, by virtue of its flattery, is inevitably non-authoritative. I argue instead that the genre is, ideally, performative and political, conferring rather than deferring to authority. My study of English panegyric focuses upon Ben Jonson, Edmund Waller, and John Dryden. While these poets praise the same figures in often very similar terms, their self-definition as poet and conception of their own authority result in dissimilar poetic strategies. For Jonson, the king and the poet empower one another. As a result, Jonson constructs his praise such that its validation depends upon the king's recognition of the poet's own authority. In my examination of Jonson's poetry, I pay particular attention to the rhetorical sophistication of his praise as I delineate the strategic self-presentation by which he redefines the patronage relationship in which he participates as court poet. Waller, unlike Jonson or Dryden, denies his own authority as a means of empowering the subjects of his panegyric. This transferring of the poet's authority to the king, however, constitutes a conditional transaction. In return, Waller requires the king to enact a particular type of political leadership--one that rejects the contemporary valorization of heroic action. I draw upon the terms of contemporary gender criticism in my attempt to articulate the pacifist ideology (associated with the feminine) that underpins much of Waller's praise. Dryden, England's first official Poet Laureate, concludes my examination. Dryden's depiction of his authority as poet is neither explicit nor entirely consistent. His most common strategy of self-presentation is overtly to deny his poetic authority in expressions of humility and incapacity. These denials, however, are disingenuous and function in such a manner as to recover ultimately the very authority they seem to reject. Like Jonson's, Dryden's panegyric is self-interested. Nevertheless, I argue that Dryden's authority ultimately fails as a result of the declining political authority he must praise. Absolute royal authority encourages the composition of royal encomia; as the political sovereignty of the Stuarts is repeatedly challenged over the course of the century, panegyric first modulates, and then loses its authoritative voice.