Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 84

MODERN AGE

WINTER 2017

I had not enough considered that the compassion she moved to
herself and children was destructive to that which I reserved for
Antony and Cleopatra; whose mutual love, being founded upon
vice, must lessen the favour of the audience to them when virtue
and innocence were oppressed by it.23

Dryden is writing during the Restoration, an era notable for
sexual license, at least among the denizens of the Royal Court;
nevertheless, he takes it for granted that Antony and Cleopatra
are negative exempla for whom sympathy must be shored up in
order to attain full tragic effect.
We must not be too quick to assume that Dryden is insincere or
naïve, refusing or failing to see an affirmation by Shakespeare of
"unlawful love," which is obvious to us. It is just as likely that the
naïveté-or insincerity-is ours: modern readers are, after all, the
heirs of a romanticism that found Satan in Paradise Lost morally
superior to God because he was more glamorous and exciting. It
may be that the level of sensual stimulation in the modern world
is such that what was quite apparently excess passion to Shakespeare as well as to Dryden seems to us merely an imaginative
way "to question the primacy of empire."24

T

he difficulty of determining the precise moral valuation of a
work of literature need not drive us to despair or to relativism
(two names for the same condition, perhaps?). The same difficulty
attends determination of meaning, but this does not make interpretation an altogether arbitrary affair, or one wholly determined
by the "ideological hegemony" of a particular time or place. Much
of the confusion about literary interpretation today arises from
equivocal uses of the word interpretation. Theorists who insist
84				 moder nagejour nal .com



http://www.modernagejournal.com

Modern Age - Winter 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2017

Contents
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Cover1
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Cover2
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Contents
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 2
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 3
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 4
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 5
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 6
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 7
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 8
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 9
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 10
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 11
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 12
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 13
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 14
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 15
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 16
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 17
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 18
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 19
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 20
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 21
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 22
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 23
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 24
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 25
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 26
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 27
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 28
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 29
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 30
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 31
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 32
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 33
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 34
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 35
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 36
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 37
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 38
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 39
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 40
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 41
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 42
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 43
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 44
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 45
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 46
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 47
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 48
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 49
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 50
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 51
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 52
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 53
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 54
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 55
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 56
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 57
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 58
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 59
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 60
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 61
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 62
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 63
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 64
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 65
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 66
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 67
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 68
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 69
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 70
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 71
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 72
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 73
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 74
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 75
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 76
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 77
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 78
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 79
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 80
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 81
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 82
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 83
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 84
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 85
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 86
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 87
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 88
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 89
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 90
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 91
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 92
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 93
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 94
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 95
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 96
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 97
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 98
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 99
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 100
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 101
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 102
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 103
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 104
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 105
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 106
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 107
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 108
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 109
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 110
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 111
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 112
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 113
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 114
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 115
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 116
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 117
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 118
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 119
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 120
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 121
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 122
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 123
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 124
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 125
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 126
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 127
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 128
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 129
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 130
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 131
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 132
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 133
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 134
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 135
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 136
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 137
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 138
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 139
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 140
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 141
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 142
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 143
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 144
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 145
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 146
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 147
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 148
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 149
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 150
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 151
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 152
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Cover3
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Cover4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2018winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017summer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016summer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2015fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2014fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2014summer
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com