"The Softness of Expression, and the Smoothness of Measure": A Model of Gendered Decorum from Dryden's Criticism (1993)

In 1679 Dryden compared Shakespeare's masculine, bolder and fiery genius with Fletcher's soft and womanish creativity, employing hierarchy of genders to recommend his preference for Shakespeare (Essays 1.212). As Dryden fashioned tools for critical inquiry, he appropriated categories of gender and translated them into critical terms for literature. Dryden's pervasive use of gender sets up principles of decorum that operate on many different levels. His most fundamental gendered distinction classifies whole languages or linguistic attributes according to and codes. In analysis of specific literary works, Dryden distinguishes certain writing styles and specific genres by gendered terms. At times sex of intended audience influences Dryden's designation of a gendered style; in other instances gendered association of literary content determines its masculine or feminine label. Still other uses of gendered decorum simply involve a gendered comparison of two authors without regard to their biological sex. Finally, Dryden assesses critical abilities of his readers and audiences given expectations of gendered stereotypes. Throughout his critical writings Dryden draws many happy similitudes, including economic, religious and political metaphors, but none prove so flexible, accurate and ultimately safe as his subtle manipulation of gendered hierarchy of society. Until quite recently, no one had elaborated on Dryden's use of gender in his critical assessments. In When Beauty Fires Blood: Love and Arts in Age of Dryden, James Winn examines centrality of sexual passion in Dryden's creative process: I argue that Dryden's complex and contradictory attitudes toward human sexuality helped shape his influential ideas about nature and art, beauty and virtue, imagination and judgment.... I address topics not much noticed in previous studies of his important role in history of English literary criticism: his tech- nical knowledge of other arts; his lively sexual imagination; his use of conventional and unconventional notions of gender to flesh out theoretical distinctions; and contrasting attitudes of his con- temporaries, especially those of women writers. (x) Winn analyzes Dryden's lifelong preference for poetry, which Dryden considered because it stimulated mind toward virtue, over sister-arts of music and painting, which he characterized as because their beauty pleased imagination. Winn's account offers a corrective to traditional views of Dryden as sharp, Tory satirist by stressing Dryden's more feminine attributes: the musical lyricism of his line, visual splendor of his imagery, precious moments when he recognizes his own emotional and sexual frailty (435). While this essay sometimes covers same texts as Winn does, basic focus and method differ altogether. When Beauty Fires Blood ties in numerous aspects of Dryden's life and artistic development with ultimate goal of more fully understanding Dryden and his work. My analysis investigates Dryden's use of gender as a model of difference upon which he establishes literary judgment with intent to prove extent to which critical discourse intersects with culturally specific ideology of gender. Where Winn is biographical, my argument is feminist and epistemological, positioning Dryden's work at beginning point of trajectory of Augustan criticism. Winn's final assessment that Dryden combined characterizations of both sexes in his own writing concurs with my appraisal of Dryden's adroit management of gender in his literary criticism, but Winn's hint that Dryden's work embodies some of deepest truths we know, with its appeal to a universal knowledge of sex and eroticism, stands on its own (435). …