Word on the street is that Pope’s The Dunciad is his masterpiece.
The descriptions of the Dunciad confuse me however. it is a satire, but what is the main point? The descriptions go on about the contemporaries he is attacking; but is this still relevant to us? Is this personal or philosophical?
Unlike Essay on Criticism, this one seems to be inaccessable to me and irrelevant, or perhaps I am simply “confoosed”.
ps See note “1”, on the bottom of that page, on that link for the citation that it (may be) his masterpiece.
Yes, because a lot more people watch Star Trek than read even the best of 18th-century satirical poems.
I read my share of Alexander Pope many decades ago, and my feeling is that his satire is not as relevant today as that of his contemporary, Jonathan Swift. But I can’t remember enough of the details of the Dunciad to say much more than that.
And more people drink Coca-Coca than imported wines, yet it is so wrong for me to have expected a single reply on the less famous subject? “A lot more people” should not imply that I would get no reply at all.
Though it find it ironic, that the subject ridiculued in The Dunciad itself prevents further discussion of it. As ringing as the titular quote, “For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky” may be, I leave you with the 18c alternative:
Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains,
And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.
There foam’d rebellious Logic, gagg’d and bound,
There, stripp’d, fair Rhet’ric languish’d on the ground;
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,
And shameless Billingsgate [bad language] her robes adorn