The Justification of English National Imperialism in John Dryden’s Poems

John Dryden justifies imperialism as means of strengthening the Stuart’s monarchy in his poems. Since Dryden serves as a public poet who celebrates and praises the imperial movement, his poems mostly deal with political agendas. In particular, John Dryden acts as the political prophet for the culmination of English imperialism in which the Stuart monarchy reigns. It is through the analogue between the Roman Empire and Dryden’s London that he wants to predict the destined future of English imperialism. Furthermore, Dryden identifies King Arthur with King Charles II. Dryden defines the Stuart Monarchy as legitimate descendants of King Arthur. Such an emphasis on the Stuart monarchy is believed to fulfill the Golden Age in England. Dryden also venerates the critical Charles II by placing of him and Caesar in tandem because of his palpable impact on English fate. In addition, using the religious metaphor, Dryden espouses the imperial regeneration of King Charles II beyond the human power in his poem. By identifying Holland with savage, Dryden justifies the imperial power of England which aims at defeating and struggling against the enemy country. The axiomatic starting point for the English imperialism is to remove the national evil, Holland, from which the entire world would suffer. The English nation should be preserved from the onset of the Thames for the purpose of its imperial mission. Moreover, Dryden’s imperial desire is straightforward in delineating the imperial design for the colonization. The imperial enthusiasm for a New Land causes Dryden to create the poem whereby colonizing a remote land is envisioned as series of English benign determination. In a word, Dryden’s poems equivalently share uniformed structures of panegyric based on the historical legitimacy and his poems serve as the means to revive and incorporate the imperial paradigm.