Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel: ‘My mother’s mold

Smid examines the poem of John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel which is a celebrated canonical poem. Dryden evidently did not think much of the emblem writers so popular in seventeenth-century England. She conveys the practice of Dryden in borrowing a metaphor from the book Emblemes by Francis Quarles for the poem. Also emphasized is the metaphor used by Dryden to describe the dilemma of Abasalom that is incredibly visual and even emblematic.