Heroic Verse and Satire (Blog-post #2)

Most of Dryden's work was satirical and criticisms of older poetry. There are some similarities but I can see a lot of differences too. For instance, our "satire" tends to be less subtle and more of a parody. Saturday Night Live is a great example of this. They are very open with their criticisms. On the contrary, Dryden's satire is almost hardly noticed, if you don't know what to look for. Someone might think his work to be serious instead of funny. The Onion is another good example. If you don't know about the Onion and try to read it, you'd think it was real. His style of poetry is also very different than ours. Dryden uses a lot of triplets for emphasis in his works. His audience is often toward the people of his time subtly making fun of other writers or the government. We aren't so subtle, but we do crack jokes about our government and people who do stupid things in the media. I believe the purpose of said works is simply to make the people laugh because we understand what is being written.

Enlightenment (Blog-post #1)

The enlightenment period is an interesting time. It begins with a Restoration. The kings return after a long time of protestant rein in England. This period very closely resembles the 21st century. There is an uproar of creativity, such as: and increase in literacy, movies, lending libraries, shopping, music, and art. Also this time period brings on the "produce more, pay less" type of economy. England joins forces with Scotland and Whales and became known as Great Britain. What's so interesting about this is that so many good things started happening in England; cities flourished and there was an increase in civil power.