The Dunciad Summary and Analysis of Book 2

 As readers begin Book II of The Dunciad, they are greeted with a much different version of Bayes than before. Rather than the desperate and insecure figure of Book I, the newly crowned and renamed King Cibber is described by Pope as an arrogant and jealous figure looking down upon his many servants, the Dunces. As all manner of Dunces gather to celebrate, the Queen of Dulness declares that there will be a series of heroic games played in order to honor the new successor. All poets and authors who serve Dulness are present, but in addition, all of the Stationers, or printers and sellers of books and print material, who serve Dulness are there as well.

It is these booksellers and bookmakers who Dulness summons forward to compete first. She creates "a poet's form" (ln. 35) and packs it full of symbols meant to denote the qualities of a dull poet: a brain full of feathers, a heart full of lead, and a plump figure connoting commercial success. She places this form in front of the booksellers and tells them that the quickest and nimblest poet capable of reaching this effigy first shall have him as a client whose work they might print. We are told of two stationers in particular vying for the prize: Lintot and Curll. They challenge one another and as the race begins, it appears that Curll will be the winner. As he races to the phantom poet, however, he slips in a puddle of his wife's waste outside of his neighbor's shop. Fearing he will no longer win the race, he cries out to Jove, the most powerful of the Roman gods, and begs him for help winning the race. While Jove on Olympus listens with amusement to the prayers of humans below and does nothing, the goddess Cloacina serves Jove and takes pity on Curll. He had often honored her with his work and so she had him "oil'd with magic juices for the course" (ln. 104) and he makes it to the poet figure first.

Unfortunately, Dulness is playing a trick on him, and while Curll tries to grab the figure, Dulness makes him impossible to catch as he disappears and reappears in a foggy cloud. She creates illusions of other dull poets whom Curll also tries to grab, all to no avail. She finally takes pity on Curll and tells him that his gift shall be that all decent writers will soon have their work made dull like the works of the poets under the Goddess, and she gives him a fine tapestry depicting the actions of her confessors, including Curll, to honor his victory.

Next, a poetess named Eliza is brought forward. The Goddess starts a literal pissing contest, in which the victorious dunce shall win the fair poetess. Curll, Osborne, and Eridanus compete, with Osborne coming out the winner. Then, an extravagant and wealthy looking man with an impressive entourage appears. The Goddess decrees that the next competition, which is aimed at authors this time, will result in the winner of the contest obtaining this wealthy man as their patron. The winner will be determined by "who can tickle best" (ln. 196). While it looks like Welsted may win, a young competitor unheard of prior to the competition prays to Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, who teaches him to find the patron's weakness, just as she taught Paris to find Achilles' heel. As a result, the youth wins.

The Goddess wishes to turn to a different game and rouses the crowd to shout, chant, and make the most chaotic noise possible to determine who is the loudest. After they join her in this command, she gifts them each a "Cat-call," telling them they are all equal in their loud and disruptive sound, but so that the contest may end, brings in her "Brayers" to make the loudest noises possible. Blackmore and his vast voice are proclaimed the winners.

The crowd then makes their way to Fleet Ditch for a diving contest amongst party-writers, or gossip writers. The winner is the diver who can both stay down the longest and also show his love for reveling in the dirt more than any other. He shall win the weekly journals and a pig of lead. Many dunces attempt this challenge, including a "desp'rate pack" (ln. 305) of gazetteers, or pamphlet publishers. Arnall wins and returns from the depths to say that he has encountered mud-nymphs and a branch of the river Styx blending into the Thames, which is the river necessary to cross into the Underworld.

To cap off the games, Dulness issues a contest for critics. They must listen to the dullest and most laborious writing possible without falling asleep. All of the critics, the audience, and even the readers of these works, despite their best efforts, ultimately fall prey to the sleep-inducing literature. Included in this is Cibber, who falls asleep on the Goddess' lap and begins to dream.

Analysis

In Book I, we began to see how dunces like the new King Cibber were trapped in a much narrower perspective than the speaker. Dulness reigned within a "sacr'd Dome (Book I, ln. 122), symbolically representing a human head. Dulness is trapped within the confines of an individual mind. In Book II, Pope builds upon this with his parade of dunces to show how Dulness is also permeating the inner circles of London and English literary society. This internal death of the mind radiates outward in Book II, both in the book's vivid imagery and its characterization of many of the victors of the Goddess of Dulness' games.

The idea that the parade of dunces speaks to the interiority hinted at in Book I is expounded upon by David Sheehan, who writes that the "movement is from outside the limits of the City strictly defined, further and further inward, a movement of contraction and narrowing" (34) and that this speaks to Pope's desire to get to the heart of what is causing Dulness, and not simply elaborating on what it is or can do (35). Sheehan traces the geographic markers of London laid out in Book II from "where the tall Maypole once o'erlooked the Strand" (ln. 24), to "Bridewell" (ln. 257), "to Fleet-ditch" (ln. 260), and so on. But there are other kinds of interiority in geography and in characters that readers are asked to consider. Images like that of the "poet's form" (ln. 35) created by Dulness show readers how key this hollowing out and interiorization is for Dulness in this passage:

She form'd this image of well-bodied air;

With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head,

A brain of Feathers, and a heart of Lead;

And empty words she gave, and sounding strain,

But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!" (ln. 42-46)

Pope describes a symbolic transformation of a poet's insides to show that this internal domain is important to Dulness—how it seeks to get at the heart of minds, hearts, and societies. The form mimics this point as well. Pope rarely places enjambed lines in this poem, saving his definitive breaks within lines for particularly important moments. In this passage, the exclamation point which is found in the center of the line acts to draw attention to the center and "heart" of a line, as well. Simply recognizing the expected end-rhymes which frame the ends of these lines and make them appear whole is not enough for Pope. This transitional space is vital.

That this interior space is so important to Pope is clear in the contests he writes about as devised by the Goddess. In the author's challenge for obtaining a patron, they must find a secret or disguised weak spot by poking and prodding at the wealthy target (ln. 215-220). In the diving contest, the competitors must stay as deep as they can for as long as they can, as if delving into the center of the world. Readers see this when they hear the winner encountered mud-nymphs who "suck'd him in" and went so deep as to approach a part of the Underworld (ln. 332, 338). As they parade further onward, the dunces "all descend" (ln. 269), as if sinking into the city. But what is perhaps made clearer from the contests is what has already been relinquished within the minds of the victors. Many of these victors, whether it be Curll or the unknown youth, prayed to gods to assist them in order to win. While this certainly shows a rather reliant nature, it also shows a dullness the Goddess strives for, one that looks to others, be they gods or writers, for their successes and triumphs. The interiority of these figures has been corrupted, and therefore only some exterior force—be it Cloacina (ln. 93) or Venus (ln. 215) or Dulness herself (ln. 243)—can aid them.

Why this interior conquest is so important to Dulness is something that we are shown through the final contest issued by the Goddess in particular. As the boring works read aloud invite sleep, those who "sat the nearest, by the words o'ercome, / Slept first ... One circle first and then a second makes, ... Like motion from one circle to the rest: / So from the midmost the mutation spreads" (ln. 401-402, 406, 408-409). Once Dulness has control of the interior space, be it of a person's mind or a city's intellectual heart, the spread of Dulness is quick and cascading. For Pope, to sacrifice that "midmost" point to Dulness is to sacrifice all points to Dulness. Readers, too, are lulled into sleep with alliterative lines full of open-mouthed tones like "soft creeping words on words the sense compose, [...] As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low" (ln. 389, 341). Even Pope's audience is not safe once the parade has taken them to the heart of London and opened the gates for Dulness.

While Book II maintains the skill in both form, imagery, and allusion that Book I established, it builds upon these earlier themes and realizes them on a larger scale—that of Dulness' army within London, the heart of Britain's literary, cultural, and intellectual life. Book II reinforces recognizable exterior geography, pushes symbolic understandings of interiority to hyperbolic extremes, and in doing so requires the reader to experience the text, inviting them into the interior of the work. Should these textual clues not make this keystone of Pope's work abundantly clear, just as readers discover how important this interiority is in the final contest, they are plunged into perhaps the most interior of places as they enter Book III: the dreams of King Cibber.

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The Dunciad Summary and Analysis of Book 1

 Summary

Book 1 of The Dunciad begins by establishing its mock-heroic style through an invocation, much the way a classical epic would. The speaker calls to "The Mighty Mother and her son who brings / The Smithfield Muses to the ear of Kings" and establishes that they were called to this work by "Dulness, Jove, and Fate." These three figures establish three keys to Pope's work: the first being the mythological representation of England's intellectual culture and values ruled over by Dulness, the second being the classical allusions and poetic structure of ancient Greece and Rome that Pope replicates, and the third being Fate, which becomes a major theme within the work, forcing the reader to question whether anything might now be done about the spread of Dulness.

Pope gives us a description of Dulness as an immortal anarchic Goddess exerting control over the minds of writers, artists, and intellectuals. Pope also provides a series of names of writers who serve Dulness, mocking and criticizing the works by authors like Cervantes, Swift, and Rabelais. We are told that Dulness means to begin a "new Saturnian age of Lead," or a gloomy, slow, and heavy period for the minds of Britain.

A mythological world meant to introduce us to the plagues upon the literary world of England begins to take shape next in Book 1. Folly holds a throne, Poetry and Poverty share a cave out of which dull poets flood the literary landscape with new printed works, and Dulness has a college for nurturing these poets. She sits here on a throne surrounded by the four "guardian Virtues" of Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Poetic Justice. Folly, subordinate to the Goddess of Dulness, supervises the four guardians: Virtue supports the throne, Fortitude knows no fear of bad reputation, and Calm Temperance and Prudence have their own specific roles to play. Last, there is Poetic Justice, who weighs truth with gold, which means he transforms lies into truth and takes gold for bribes. Within this world, it is not only the writers of Pope's time that are vivid characters; so are the various facets of writing, such as Metaphors, Tragedy, Comedy, Farce, and so on—all of which are illustrated as amassing into one chaotic and confusing force under the influence of Dulness.

Dulness, shrouded in clouds with a veil of fog over her face, now takes us to the mock-heroic's first conflict: she must pick a successor for Eusden, the aging poet-laureate. Though she has many poets who serve her whom Pope lists and of whom she is deeply proud, she sets her sights on a poet named Bayes as her choice. Bayes, however, is deep in conflict. While his works certainly serve Dulness and "Nonsense precipitate," he is struggling to finish works and around "him much Embryo, much Abortion lay, / Much future Ode, and abdicated Play." In his library, he looks around and thinks of all of the writers he has plagiarized, including Shakespeare and Molière. The rest of the great books in his library have largely remained unread, used merely as decor and "serve (like other fools) to fill a room." Many of these have been spared from Bayes' touch, according to Pope, lying outside of his mental or physical reach, closed and protected on the highest shelves.

Now, however, Bayes seizes twelve of these from the shelves and takes his own folio of work to use as the base for building an altar to Dulness. He cries out the Goddess, expressing his disillusionment. He has served her well, but wonders if it is time to move on to other pursuits. He describes how once a demon stole his pen and "betry'd [him] into common sense," but aside from this incident, his writing has been purely loyal to Dulness. He asks the Goddess if his work did not please her, and feeling lost, he wonders what other professions he might take up in place of being one of Dulness' poets. He considers entering the Church, taking up gambling or "gaming," or becoming a party-writer. He comes to no conclusion and decides to burn his altar as an effigy, sending his unpublished works out into the world untouched or tarnished by England's printing world, London's in particular.

Dulness is awakened by the light and takes "a sheet of Thule from her bed," referring to a sheet of an unfinished poem whose ink is still wet or whose writing was too cold and heavy to complete. She flies down to Bayes and uses the sheet to put out the fire, rescuing the works. She takes him back to the most sacred hall of her college and declares the place his home. She anoints him with opium and puts the symbol of her sacred bird upon a crown which she places on Bayes' head. Eusden, Dulness' poet-laureate, is dead, the Goddess announces, and Bayes is made King of Dulness and is now referred to as Cibber, after Pope's real-world object of criticism, Britain's poet laureate at the time. This news is met with much chaotic noise and celebration as "the hoarse nation croak'd, 'God save King Log!'"

Analysis

This section expertly established Pope's ability to mimic the writers he is critiquing while simultaneously producing a deeper literary meaning in his own writing. As critic William Kinsley points out, in Book I, Pope writes that under Dulness and Chaos, Epic and Farce "get a jumbled race" (ln. 70) even as Pope himself writes a farcical epic (29). Pope chooses this style intentionally, and his knowing artfulness makes his work both impactful and canonical. In Book I, Pope uses a variety of literary devices to establish that the writers he critiques are, in caving to Dulness, less human than his own masterful speaker. In doing so, he provides a roadmap for understanding the text and the world it creates.

Early on in this work, we are provided with language both beautiful and grotesque to describe this new period in England's literary and intellectual life. Scholar Edward Thomas describes the world of Dulness as "full of monstrous distortion," and this certainly rings true in the diction and the imagery we are provided (448). We are told that the poet servants of Dulness are "momentary monsters" (ln. 83), "brazen, brainless brothers" (ln. 33) who breed "spawn, scarce quick in embryo" (ln.59), "new-born nonsense" (ln. 60), and "Maggots, half-form'd" (ln. 61). Though the language used here clearly communicates a disturbing realm full of inhuman creatures, the construction of this language within the poem tells a different story. Most of the above examples showcase the speaker using alliteration to create repetitive sounds that are pleasing to the ear. They create consistency within the text rather than the distortion the images seem to imply. Also, while the images of half-formed maggots and newborns are meant to convey that the works of these poets are not fully or effectively shaped, they exist within a predetermined pattern: ten-syllable lines paired into rhyming couplets, often following iambic pentameter in metric structure. This would suggest that this poem has, in fact, always been fully formed or fully imagined. Both of these details tell us that though the speaker wishes to convey the dark side of Dulness' reign and her army, he cannot help but write with skill and even beauty. As readers, we see that this speaker cannot be simply another Dunce.

The personification of any number of abstract concepts within this first book acts as a foil for the monstrous nature of Dulness' army of Dunces, a juxtaposition that makes this degradation of humanity seem all the more extreme. Dulness' throne is surrounded by four guardian Virtues who are given strikingly human descriptions like these:

Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears

Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:

Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake,

Who hunger and who thirst for scribbling sake:

Prudence, whose glass presents th' approaching jail:

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,

And solid pudding against empty praise. (ln. 47-54)

These are figures we can picture and imagine quite clearly in human form. Similarly, literary devices become anthropomorphized as well. Readers see a "Mob of Metaphors" (ln. 67), "Tragedy and Comedy embrace" (ln. 69), and "Time himself [stand] still at [Dulness'] command" (ln. 71). Meanwhile, what human actions we are given in this book are often dehumanized. Take our protagonist, Bayes. The speaker tells us that Bayes "gnaw'd his pen" (ln. 117), "Plunged for his sense" (ln. 119), and "flounder'd on in mere despair" (ln. 120). These are all animalistic actions, some of which conjure up the sense that, at least mentally, Bayes seems to exist in a watery world in which humans could not survive. These categorizations of mythological, abstract, and human figures align in many ways with the classical mythology that Pope is alluding to and drawing from in his work. In many Greek and Roman tales, it is gods and demigods who are depicted as fully human and who often turned humans who had committed wrongs in the gods' eyes into animals, such as Acanthus, Aedon, and Cereus. Pope's writing, therefore depicts an intellectual, cultural, and historical depth in drawing these connections between classical works and his own mock-epic.

The speaker's point of view is also incredibly telling here. Within Book I, we see the speaker take us through the world of Dulness, her college, her Empire, and then to the world of Bayes in his library. We see references to important, albeit infamous, areas in the English literary and artistic world, including Grub-Street and Drury-lane (ln. 44). The scope of the speaker's understanding and vision is broad in this Book. Readers are able to see early on that the perspective presented by the speaker is far different from the "bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down" (ln. 37) who dwell and creep out of the "cave of Poverty and Poetry" in the world of Dulness (ln. 34). Contrast this with Bayes, who readers are told has not read the most important works buried within his library (ln. 145-151), and we see a different picture. Bayes is described as "sinking from thought to thought," plunging "for his sense, but [finding] no bottom there" (ln. 119). If Bayes has any perspective that can compete in power with the speaker's, it is one that is very deep, dark, and suffocating, revealing little to nothing to reader. Pope kills two birds with one stone in this approach: we are given a broad understanding of the mock-heroic's geography and scope, and we are given additional reason to believe that the speaker of this work is himself no Dunce blinded by Dulness.

Between Book I's structure, diction, imagery, and allusions, we are given a firm understanding of what, according to the poem, is at stake for humanity, as well as what is at stake for Pope. In creating a mock-epic of this nature, Pope risks being aligned with the very behavior he so loathes. But by studying the details he gives the reader in contrast with the creatures populating his epic, he encourages the reader to trust that his choices are intentional and multi-faceted, mocking and sophisticated. It is essential for Pope to establish this early on, and it is why this must be a critical focus in analyzing Book I and understanding how the rest of the epic reinforces and builds upon this initial part.

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Analysis of Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad

 Alexander Pope has long been acknowledged as one of the leading satirists of his age. Adopting the 18th-century belief that the “lash” of satire could lead to change, he applied that lash liberally in various works targeting those who established themselves as leaders, politically, artistically, and socially, but whose wrongheaded approach simply misled the public. This method proves especially strong in his celebrated The Dunciad (1723), a poem in four books.

The Dunciad was born from discussions among Pope and other members of the informal literary society called the Scriblerus Club. Various voices of the Tory Party, including Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Arbuthnot, enjoyed concocting satires called the “Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus” that cleverly ridiculed certain individuals. Arbuthnot contributed the most to the “memoirs,” although they would be published under Pope’s name in the 1741 edition of his works. Pope and Swift worked together in 1727–28 to publish three volumes titled Miscellanies, also satire containing Pope’s “Treatise on the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry.” All of the writings took sharp aim at inferior poets and critics who had gained the eye and ear of the public, establishing themselves as of much greater importance than their work merited. Those individuals reacted as expected, releasing vitriolic responses to Pope’s satire. They would all see themselves in unfortunate characterizations in Pope’s rebuttal, The Dunciad. Based in form on a Latin treatise, it labels the poetasters “dunces” and contains much detail regarding their individual exploits. Pope demonstrates through his own admirable execution everything wrong with the writing of poets like Colley Cibber, John Dennis, the Reverend Laurence Eusden, Lord Hervey, and others. No poet better represented the conservation of words and clean expression admired by the 18th century nor worked better in heroic couplets, preserving the fixed form, yet adding variations in rhythm.

Pope’s friend William Cleland supposedly wrote “A Letter to the Publisher,” which precedes the poem, although many believe Pope himself wrote it. In part, he discusses the fact that some have questioned why Pope spends so much energy writing about such weak subjects, persons “too obscure for satyr.” He responds that their obscurity “renders them more dangerous, as less thought of: Law can pronounce judgment only on open facts; Morality alone can pass censure on intentions of mischief.” He agrees with Pope that “no public punishment” remained, other than “what a good Writer infl icts.” Alluding to attacks on Pope’s physical condition, he notes, “Deformity becomes an object of Ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must Dulness when he sets up for a Wit.” Pope felt that such “vain pretenders” had to receive their due from a pen far sharper than their own.

The fictional character Martinus Scriblerus writes an introduction to the poem, advising readers that The Dunciad is fashioned after a poem by Homer featuring Margites, recorded “to have been Dunce the first.” He describes the desperate times in which the author existed, when paper proved so cheap that anyone could write and publish, and the public remained at the mercy of the dullards. He does the only thing he can, which is to write a satire in the heroic fashion, selecting a main hero; Pope will establish Colley Cibber as that hero. Cibber helped operate a drama house and eventually became poet laureate, although his works proved offensive, unimaginative, and miserably executed in the opinion of many. The support he gained by garnering wealthy and powerful patrons allowed his continued public exposure to ridicule.

Each of the four books begins with an Argument that describes its action. In the first, the Goddess in the City of the great Empire of Dulness must find a successor to the present Poet Laureate. “Bays,” an allusion to Cibber, sits among his books, contemplating whether to go to church, gaming, or a party, finally settling on raising an altar of “proper books.” Pope places Cibber first close to the walls of Bedlam, linking the dunces with madness to emphasize their irrational behavior. As the critic David Morris notes, satire consists of a moral, a psychological, and a literal study of the irrational. Pope suggests that people could choose madness or rationality. Madness can prove entertaining, a fact suggested in the characterization, from the “Cave of Poverty and Poetry,” that bards “Escape in Monsters, and amaze the town.”

Pope establishes Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Poetic Justice as allegorical figures who behold the development of a “nameless something,” more precisely masses of unidentifiable material called poems or plays. The product of the new poet monsters, they represent “new-born nonsense,” mere “Maggots halfform’d in rhyme” that “learn to crawl on poetic feet.” Cibber, or “Bays,” sinks “from thought to thought” into “a vast profound,” plunging as if to the bottom of an abyss or pool to locate his sense. Pope suggests that Cibber will go to any lengths, or depths, to become famous. Unable to locate the bottom limit of his despair or to work out any plan of his own, he steals from the writings of others, as the great heroes of literature observe him from a heavenly vantage point.

Pope returns repeatedly in many of his works to reflect upon the concept of “wit.” A popular term in his era, it suggests a talent all writers hoped to be described critically as possessing and exhibiting. However, Pope cautions that simply because one person deems another witty, that does not make him so. Wit remains a difficult commodity to gain, and Bays [Cibber] becomes fearful he will not produce any. One character in the poem urges Bays to seek a place in the dark of dullness, so as not to be judged by the measure of true wit:

And lest we err by Wit’s wild dancing light,
Secure us kindly in our native night.
Or, if to Wit a coxcomb make pretence,
Guard the sure barrier between that and Sense.

“Cibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain” will reduce the art of writing to a shameful shambles. The narrator then turns to Thomas Shadwell, the unfortunate subject of John Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe: A Satire Upon The True-Blue Protestant Poet T.S., a satirical poem similar in approach to The Dunciad. Dryden had taken Shadwell to task for his The Medal of John Bayes, as Pope now singled out Cibber, the “Bays” of his poem. The Mother goddess crowns Cibber “king colley” in the closing lines of the first book, as he measures down to her lowly qualifications.

“Book the Second” focuses on the games played in celebration of Cibber’s “coronation,” a parody of the Olympic Games. Pope models his mockery after Virgil, who used the games as a serious subject to represent a peaceful enactment of war. As Morris explains, Pope does this precisely to debase the meaning of ceremony. Poets and critics attend the competition in honor of the new poet king, trailed by their patrons and booksellers, representatives of the latter group also receiving a lambasting by Pope in The Dunciad for scurrilous business practices. Various accidents occur during the gaming, all designed to make the participants look as foolish as possible. The “Exercises for the Poets” consist of “tickling, vociferating, diving.” The lines describing the poet Arnall’s dive well represent the tone of the second book, clarifying even further Pope’s assessment of the writing efforts of the dunces:

Furious he dives, precipitately dull.
Whirlpools and storms his circling arm invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
Downward to climb, and backward to advance.
He brings up half the bottom on his head,
And loudly claims the Journals and the Lead.

Pope based that character on William Arnall, “bred an Attorney, [and] a perfect Genius in this sort of work,” according to Pope’s footnote. Because Arnall had misused Pope’s friends, he landed in the satire. The imagery in this passage clearly suggests that Arnall creates metaphoric “waves” to distract from the fact that he remains unrepentantly dull. As a crab does, he retreats rather than advances, and moves downward, suggesting participation in low culture, rather than to the higher ground that would symbolize value. At the second book’s conclusion, critics read aloud, causing everyone to fall asleep and concluding the games. Pope implies that critical activity results in simple regurgitation, requiring absolutely no creativity. The result proves so dull that even the dunces cannot appreciate it.

In the third Book, The Dunciad’s hero naps. Pope again draws on classical sources, as sleep proved crucial to Homer’s hero, Odysseus, who enjoyed visits from his guide, Athena, while asleep. The nap echoes the classical pattern of the sleep journey, when the hero descended into Hades to consult dead warriors regarding how he might proceed. However, in Cibber’s case, he forgets the past, rather than awakening with a renewed understanding that might guide his future actions. The act clarifies nothing for him; rather, he will awaken believing himself the most fit to rule over the dull kingdom he sees in his vision. Pope emphasizes Cibber’s lack of metaphoric vision, as well as a material vision that might awaken in him any semblance of intellectual curiosity.

As summarized, in this book the ghost of Settle visits in Cibber’s sleep to show him the wonders of his kingdom. From the Mount of Vision, Settle displays the “past triumphs of the empire of Dulness.” They next view the present and then the future, discussing the failures of science. Cibber receives a miraculous vision and learns that the throne of Dulness “shall be advanced over the Theateres, and set up even at Court; then how her Sons shall preside in the seats of Arts and Science.” Pope makes the point that a lack of imagination in one area of culture may promote that same lack in another. While Arts differs greatly from Science, both may be equally destroyed by men of Cibber’s ilk.

Pope achieves his purpose to demonstrate through satire the quite serious effects of shallow thinking on all aspects of culture. Again Cibber makes an apt representative, as he was a comanager of Drury Lane Theatre and partially responsible for its popular farces. An example of Pope’s use of imagery in this section is his insertion of multiple images of owls. While viewed as representing wisdom in classical times, owls were thought stupid creatures in the age of reason. He thus employs the great birds, which have a magnificent appearance but no intellectual capacity, to emphasize the dark nature of the dunces’ power, as in this passage:

There, dim in the clouds, the poring Scholiasts mark,
Wits, who like owls, see only in the dark,
A Lumberhouse of books in ev’ry head,
For ever reading, never to be read!

No matter how much reading the “Scholiasts,” a term that suggests perverted scholars, undertake, they will never be able to write like the masters.

As all heroes do, Cibber must encounter monsters during his sleep vision. Most monsters are fantastical miscreants, the product of a fearsome creativity. However, the monsters Cibber encounters during his dream are the same as those of his day-to-day life, indicating he lacks imagination, and fantasy and reality are the same in his world. This is illustrated in the line spoken to Cibber, “Each Monster meets his likeness in thy mind.” Pope references himself, Swift, and Gay in this section, as losers in this “Revolution of Learning” led by Cibber. He also references the great architect Inigo Jones, whose marvels stood under great disrepair, neglected by London’s leaders during Pope’s time. The book concludes with Cibber’s celebrating a vision in which education has all but disappeared:

“Proceed, great days! ’till Learning fly the shore,
‘Till Birch shall blush with noble blood no more,
‘Till Thames see Eaton’s sons for eve play,
‘Till Westminster’s whole year be holiday,
‘Till Isis’ Elders reel, their pupils’ sport,
And Alma mater lie dissolv’d in Port!”

The fourth book of The Dunciad is most often seen anthologized in excerpts. The Goddess makes her ascent in great majesty to oversee the destruction of Order and Science, replacing them with the Kingdom of the Dull. She silences the Muses, while her children, various “Half-wits, tasteless Admirers, vain Pretenders, the Flatterers of Dunces, or the Patrons of them,” gather about, discouraging all progressive thought and activity. The instructors under her sway promise to bombard their charges with words in order to discourage thought: “Since Man from beast by Words is known, / Words are Man’s province, Words we teach alone.”

Pope especially slams the meaningless ritual demanded by those who seek an Oxford education. Those in charge “vest dull Flatt’ry in the sacred Gown; / Or give from fool to fool the Laurel crown.” As the parade of miscreants continues, “There march’d the bard and blockhead, side by side, / Who rhym’d for hire, and patroniz’d for pride.” Pope again satirizes those who attempt to balance their lack of talent with paid tributes to pompous patrons. He again blasts critics, echoing lines from his An Essay on Criticism suggesting that they attempt to see the whole work when reviewing it, not simply small parts:

The critic Eye, tht mircroscope of Wit
See hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body’s harmony, the beaminig soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman,
Wasse shall see, When Man’s whole frame is obvious to a Flea.

With reason lost, the next step is to “doubt of god / Make Nature still incroach upon his plan,” substituting a “Mechanic Cause” in the creator’s place, to “Make God Man’s Image, Man the final Cause,” and “See all in Self, and but for self be born.” In An Essay on Man Pope cautioned man not to fixate on himself at the expense of God and Science.

While passing judgment on various disputes, the Goddess suggests those involved “find proper employment . . . in the study of Butterflies, Shells, Birds-nests, Moss, etc., with particular caution, not to proceed beyond Trifl es, to any useful or extensive views of Nature, or of the author of Nature.” Now the dunces may truly enjoy their position, having been actually ordered not to engage in creative or intellectual activity of note. The poem closes as the group answers the Goddess’s call to make “One Mighty Dunciad of the Land!” Night and Chaos reign, evoking thoughts of Milton’s Paadise Lost, in a once creative and intelligent world:

Lo! Thy dread Empire, Chaos! Is restor’d;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! Lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries All.

As Aubrey Williams writes, “Pope’s poetry can move us deeply because it so often stirs a sense of the innate precariousness of all things.” While his satire contains much humor, it also succeeds in projecting Pope’s belief that all “delights” remain transitory. He consistently stresses the relationship of art to everyday life and emphasizes that man’s unrelenting moral failure will lead to great losses, of both a material and a spiritual nature. The Dunciad stands as an inversion of the Christian vision, rule converted to misrule. Pope understands the occasional necessity for a shake-up in order; however, he strongly cautions against crowd mentality and radical change simply for the sake of change. He understands the courage required for those in the minority, as he and his fellow Scriblerians were, to refuse to accept mediocrity, although the loudest and best-placed voices in society demand it in the name of the people.

COURTESY: www.literariness.org

The most important questions (Rape of the Lock)

 The most important question of the " Rape of the Lock " by Alexander Pope.

1. Character sketch of Belinda.

2. Element of supernatural machinery in the poem.

3. The rape of the lock is a mirror to eighteen-century English society.

4. Pope style and a heroic couplet.

5. The rape of the lock as an epic.

6. Satire in the poem

Theme: The Triviality of Court Life (Rape of the Lock)

 

Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” recounts a seemingly trivial episode of 18th-century royal court life. Belinda, a beautiful and charming young woman, spends a day at court where she encounters the Baron, an aristocrat greatly taken with her beauty. The Baron snips off one of the two large curls into which Belinda has styled her hair, and this prompts her to begin a kind of courtly war, demanding the Baron return the lock of hair. From here, the narrative becomes increasingly silly, as the courtiers ultimately discover that the lock is no longer in the Baron’s possession and has been transformed into a constellation in the sky above. Throughout the poem, Pope references the tradition of epic poetry—poems about serious conflict and heroism—to show, by comparison, how trivial and vain court life is.

One of the most important points to note about the composition of the poem is Pope’s choice of meter: heroic couplets (pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter). These are traditionally associated with works in the epic tradition, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. This misleadingly suggests to the reader that the subject matter of “The Rape of the Lock” will be equally heroic, and thus the poem’s meter ironically emphasizes the triviality of the narrative. This is because epic poems typically recount profound, high-stakes struggles, such as clashes between cities, between mankind and the gods, and among the gods themselves. Epics are therefore normally seen as an extremely lofty poems which deal with the most serious of events. While classical epics were not composed in heroic couplets, 18th-century translations of the classics often were, and Pope’s own translations of Homer are prime examples. This means that Pope’s opting to use heroic couplets to focus on the trivial story of a woman’s ruined hairdo in “The Rape of the Lock” was designed to strike contemporary readers as clearly ridiculous. Instead of encountering an epic poem about noble warriors and famous battles, the reader is presented with an obviously unimportant incident about the loss of a lock of hair.

Pope further emphasizes the contrast between the loftiness of the style and the silliness of the poem’s narrative by drawing comparisons between his own characters and figures from the epic tradition. For instance, at the beginning of Canto V, after Belinda’s lock has been cut off, Pope compares his characters to those in Virgil’s Aeneid. The Baron is conflated with Aeneas (“the Trojan”), Thalestris with Anna, and Belinda with Dido: “But fate and Jove had stopped the Baron’s ears. / In vain Thalestris with reproach assails, / For who can move when fair Belinda fails? / Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain, / While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain.” Here, Pope is referencing Book IV of the Aeneid, in which Venus and Juno influence Aeneas, a refugee Trojan prince, and Dido, queen of Carthage, to become lovers. Aeneas cannot stay in Carthage, however, as it is his destiny to sail to Italy and found Rome. He is famously unmoved by Dido’s rage or by her sister Anna’s protestations, leading Dido to take her own life. This comparison between Belinda’s feelings, lamenting her lost lock of hair (which will, of course, grow back), and Dido’s, on the verge of suicide, is humorously misaligned, poking fun at the relative silliness of Belinda’s idea of suffering.

Finally, in other places, Pope directly parodies portions of his own translations of Homer, to draw a close comparison between the intensity of battle and the triviality of court culture. For instance, the line, “Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive, / Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive,” echoes Pope’s own translation of the Iliad, 4.508–9: “Now Shield with Shield, with Helmet Helmet clos’d, / To Armour Armour, Lance to Lance oppos’d.” This parallel highlights just how unimportant these courtly activities are, as Pope draws a direct comparison between the noble activities of Homeric men and the vain activities performed by his own characters. Instead of fighting to the death with weapons (“Shield”; “Helmet”; “Armour”; “Lance”), the men at court merely compete to be the favourites of various ladies, as “Beaux banish beaux.” And instead of fighting with swords, these men compete to see who has the most decorative “sword-knot,” a ribbon or tassel attached to the hilt of a sword. For these men, as the “sword-knots” symbolize, looking good is more important than actually having any skill in combat.

Thus, Pope juxtaposes his use of epic meter and classical references with the silliness of the poem’s underlying narrative for comic effect. In doing so, he effectively mocks the importance afforded to transient expressions of beauty at court. By adopting an epic meter and drawing comparisons between Homeric figures and his own characters, he is able to emphasize that the concerns and duties of court life are ultimately insubstantial and appear downright silly alongside the great struggles depicted in epic poetry.

COURTESY: www.litcharts.com