The Dunciad (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Alexander Pope
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Type of Plot: Mock-heroic
- Time of Work: Eighteenth century
- Setting: England and the underworld
- Principal Characters: Dulness, Tibbald, Colley Cibber
- Genres: Poetry, Mock-heroic poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Literature, Writing, England or English people, Eighteenth century, Criticism, Gods or goddesses, Heroes or heroism, Princes or princesses, Underworld or Hades
- Locales: London, England, Underworld
When Alexander Pope set out to criticize the general literary climate of his time and to avenge the slights given his own work by other writers, he took the theme of John Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe (1682), in which the poetaster Thomas Shadwell is crowned ruler of the Kingdom of Nonsense, and expanded it to make a true mock epic of three books. He added a fourth book when he rewrote the poem in 1742. The Dunciad acclaims the goddess Dulness, daughter of Chaos and Night, and her chosen prince. In the first edition the prince of dullness is the scholar Lewis Theobald (Tibbald);...
[The entire page is 1663 words long]
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