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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... Rape of the Lock and Other Poems . 1940. Geoffrey Tillotson , ed . Volume Illi : An Essay on Man . 1950. Maynard Mack , ed . Volume IIIii : Epistles to Several Persons ( Moral Essays ) . 1951. F. W. Bateson , ed . Volume IV : Imitations ...
... Rape of the Lock , Garth's Dispensary , Dryden's MacFlecknoe , and such peripheral works as Swift's Battle of the Books — are usually grouped with the widely assorted varieties of mock - heroics , especially mock - heroic satire . In ...
... Rape of the Lock as the generic model and The Dunciad as a divergent , mutant form , the generic model was in fact es- tablished by The Dispensary , was diverged from ( though only slightly ) by The Rape of the Lock , and was then ...
... Rape of the Lock as " the perfection of the mock - epic " and have read not only 10. Augustan writers had no consistent terminology for mock - epic . In the seventeenth cen- tury , mock - epic was an aspect of burlesque . Pope called The ...
... Rape of the Lock , we misjudge both poems . So I here focus on two poems . Garth's long unread Dispensary and Pope's Dunciad , poems that come closest to exemplifying the model of the mock - epic . The influences of Garth's forgotten ...
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 | |