SOURCE: "Seeing the King: Biblical and Classical Texts in Astraea Redux," in Studies in English Literature, Vol. 32, No. 3, Summer 1992, pp. 407-27.

In the following excerpt, Cacicedo argues that as a depiction of the Restoration, Dryden's poem Astraea Redux is not servile as critics have suggested, but that instead it relies upon analogies from the bible and from classical works to provide a realistic view of King Charles as well as of the contemporary political climate under which he was obliged to rule.

Panegyric as it is, Dryden's Astraea Redux has been the object of much critical scorn. Samuel Johnson articulated the problem clearly when he said that "In the meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days in which the Roman emperors were deified, he [Dryden] has ever been equaled." Twentieth-century critics, although taking into account the historic event celebrated in the poem...