ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -These chapters relate the story of King David ’s favourite son Absalom and his false friend Achitophel (Ahithophel), who persuades Absalom to revolt against his father. In his poem, Dryden assigns each figure in the crisis a biblical name; e.g., Absalom is Monmouth, Achitophel is Shaftesbury, and David is Charles II.

Detailed explanation-2: -The poem tells the Biblical tale of the rebellion of Absalom against King David; in this context it is an allegory used to represent a story contemporary to Dryden, concerning King Charles II and the Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681). The poem also references the Popish Plot (1678).

Detailed explanation-3: -"This was said by a priest that I often met at Mr. Pope’s: and he5 seemed to confirm it; adding, that King Charles obliged Dryden to put his Oxford speech into verse, and to insert it toward the close of his Absalom and Achitophel."

Detailed explanation-4: -Dryden portrays Achitophel as a false friend and a revengeful enemy and he thinks in a way that either to rule a state or to ruin the country. To achieve his end, he broke the Triple Alliance between England, Sweden and Holland by instigating war against Holland.

Detailed explanation-5: -Absalom and Achitophel Dryden penned his greatest satire in the midst of the Exclusion Crisis (1679–81), which was an attempt to exclude Charles II’s Catholic younger brother James from the throne of England.