Dryden's Zimri and Chaucer's Pardoner: A Comparative Study of Verse Portraiture.

Description: Compares and contrasts John Dryden's description of Zimri in "Absalom and Achitophel" with Chaucer's description of the Pardoner in GP, emphasizing the "fine tension" between "precision and . . . universality" in the latter, and remarking on how Chaucer's imagery, diction, stress, enjambment, and caesura combine to produce a description that "seems reflectively or conversationally spontaneous."