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The Pleiadic Age of Stuart Poesie: Restoration Uranography, Dryden's Judicial Astrology, and the Fate of Anne Killigrew

Brown, Morgan Alexander
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Abstract

The following Thesis is a survey of seventeenth-century uranography, with specific focus on the use of the Pleiades and Charles's Wain by English poets and pageant writers as astrological ciphers for the Stuart dynasty (1603-1649; 1660-1688). I then use that survey to address the problem of irony in John Dryden's 1685 Pindaric elegy, "To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew," since the longstanding notion of what the Pleiades signify in Dryden's ode is problematic from an astronomical and astrological perspective. In his elegiac ode, Dryden translates a young female artist to the Pleiades to actuate her apotheosis, not for the sake of mere fulsome hypberbole, but in such a way that Anne (b. 1660-d. 1685) signifies for the reign of Charles II (1660-1685) in her Pleiadic catasterism. The political underpinnings of Killigrew's apotheosis reduce the probability that Dryden's hyperbole reserves pejorative ironic potential.

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2010-04-30
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Hevelius, Restoration prodigies, Restoration prodigy, birth star, Pleiads, Pleiades, Tycho Brahe, Restoration, Anne Killigrew, Ursa Major, Charles's Wain, judicial astrology, Dryden, Charls his wain, William Bradford Gardner, Edward Matthew, irony, Arcturus, Laura Brown, Howard Weinbrot, Pindar, uranography, William Lilly, Charles I, Charles II, uranology, septentrional, Polaris, Ben Jonson, Virgil, Taygete, Electra, Astronomica, Hyginus, Fasti, Ovid, coronation James I, vernal equinox, septem triones, seven stars, 1660 star, waine, Ursa Minor, Flamsteed, Halley, David Vieth
Citation
Brown, Morgan Alexander. "The Pleiadic Age of Stuart Poesie: Restoration Uranography, Dryden's Judicial Astrology, and the Fate of Anne Killigrew." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2010. https://doi.org/10.57709/1332057.
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2010-05-26
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