“An Old Age Is Out”: The New Dryden and the Arts of the Restoration

—a conference organized by Maximillian Novak, University of California, Los Angeles, and Jayne Lewis, University of California, Los Angeles

The conference places Dryden at the center of various cultural transformations, particularly in the realms of art and music. Treating the poet as both shaper, gauge, and artifact of a society caught between old monarchy and new empire, ancient models and modern modalities, allows us to celebrate his exceptional relevance to our own life on the cusp of epochs. For, as Dryden’s Secular Masque of 1700 observes: “an old Age is out,” and as true lovers of Dryden we embrace a “time to begin a new.”