This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1717.
Events
January – Three Hours After Marriage, a stage play by Alexander Pope, John Gay and John Arbuthnot, mocks the poet and critic John Dennis as "Sir Tremendous Longinus the Critic", Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea as "Clinkett the Poetess" and Colley Cibber as "Plotwell". The play encounters massive criticism and has a short run, which mortifies Pope.[1] In February, Dennis publishes his critical Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Translation of Homer[2] to which in May Thomas Parnell retorts with Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice. With the Remarks of Zolius. To which is prefixed, the Life of the said Zolius, after which Dennis and Pope are reconciled for a decade.[1]
March 2 – Ballet master John Weaver revives the pantomime genre at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London with The Loves of Mars and Venus – a new Entertainment in Dancing after the manner of the Antient Pantomimes and Perseus and Andromeda.[3]
The Irish poet Hugh MacCurtin (Aodh Buidhe Mac Cuirtin)'s A brief discourse in vindication of the antiquity of Ireland, out of many authentick Irish histories and chronicles (based on Geoffrey Keating's History of Ireland) is published in Dublin.[6] The author is imprisoned in the city about this time.