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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... Dulness and Poverty ... This 9. Dennis , like twentieth - century critics of the mock - epic , sees this fictionality as dominat- ing all actualities brought into the poem : " [ T ] hose Poetical Persons , to which Particular names are ...
... Dulness from the City to the polite world .... A Person must be fix'd upon to support this action .... He finds his name to be Tibbald , and he becomes of course the Hero of the poem .... As for the characters , the publick hath already ...
... Dulness " conglob'd " ( B 1V.79 ) brings them together to take their share in Pope's " public punishment " ( TE , V.14 ) . Massing her dunces , Dulness also displays the " fact " that underlies Pope's warning . England is over- run with ...
... Dulness and Pov- erty " ) and by attributing the poem's fictions to that Moral : " This truth he wrapped in an Allegory ( as the constitution of Epic poesy requires ) " ( TE , V.50 ) . Doing so , Scriblerus asks us to judge by a truth ...
... Dulness , a group picture since Dulness is only her massed minions . Augustan poets habitually used narrative to enliven description , from Pope's expansion of Donne's adjectives into stories in his " versifications " to Gay's ability ...
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 | |