Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-EpicPenn State Press, 1. sept 1992 - 256 pages Designs on Truth provides a reinterpretation of Augustan poetry, not as works to be defended before the court of Matthew Arnold and the Romantic tradition but as works that examine the rich relationships among text, culture, and world. In Designs on Truth, Gregory Colomb identifies the characteristics of the mock-epic and argues that the form had developed formal expectations. In making this argument, he explains the intentions of the writers of mock-epics, and expands our conception of the interest and significance of such poems. By demonstrating how these poems are supported by the genre's poetics, he brings out ways these poems differ from other &"Augustan&" poems such as the Horatian epistles that are often discussed with them. Designs on Truth puts into question the distinction between history and poetry in the mock-epic, examining it at three levels of poetic structure: fable (global narrative structure), and portraits (characterological narrative structure). Focusing chiefly on the mock-epic's representations in terms of class and &"kind,&" this study returns historical particulars to the central role that the poets had always given them and seeks to understand how they are made poetic. Designs on Truth shows how the poems themselves subvert any easy distinction between historical and poetic particulars. This often philosophical genre is itself a reconsideration of the role of reference (fact) and judgment (value) in representation. This study shows how representation and judgment work in the mock-epic, and how together they stand at the heart of the dominant Augustan poetic. Colomb also provides new readings of the mock-epic, including the first comprehensive reading of The Dispensary since the eighteenth century. |
From inside the book
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... College , the Georgia Institute of Tech- nology , and Emory University . I was also aided by the electronic data- base services of the University of Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley . Most of all , I am every day ...
... College of Physicians , he could draw on a number of mod- els . Epic connections were easy to find . His mock - heroic framework he borrowed almost whole from Boileau . His mock - heroic style he found in Dryden . And for modern epic he ...
... College with his Retinue , and some of the Servants that at- tended there to dispense the Medicines ; and is so far real , tho ' the Poetical Relation be fictitious " ( [ A5vHA6r l ) . The poem has its battle , but the battle is only a ...
... College proper , in those raised above their station when in 1687 James II forced the College to enlarge its membership as part of his effort to fill Parlia- ment and other political institutions with his supporters . These outsid- ers ...
... College's renewed industry , the stage is set for Envy and Discord to do their work . Giving the agency in the story over to the machinery , Garth makes the action chiefly psychological , chiefly a matter of desire and obligation . Each ...
Contents
Prologue | 33 |
Naming Names | 35 |
Dullness by Its Proper Name 3 | 59 |
Urban Gravitation | 79 |
Ranging Afield | 95 |
Prologue | 119 |
From Caricature to Portraiture 6 | 129 |
Dishonourable Confederacies | 145 |
A Taxonomy of Dunces 8 | 163 |
A Succession of Monarchs 9 | 183 |
Epilogue | 207 |
209 | |
219 | |