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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... kind of historical attention — the " pains " Courthope speaks of — that few readers have been willing to give . Not that particulars tell the whole story of the mock - epic . The standard account of the mock - epic has emphasized its ...
... kind of avoidance , see Fabricant ( 1982 ) , Pollak ( 1985 ) , and Brown . 7. For the complexity of eighteenth - century attitudes toward the classical inheritance , see Weinbrot ( 1978 ) . Although Weinbrot has led some to abandon the ...
... kind of epic is mock - epic ? Mock - epic is surely something like epic , but how like ? Is the mock in mock - epic like that when the class clown mocks teacher ? Or like that when vigilantes make a mock- ery of justice ? Or like that ...
... kind of particularized poetry , con- nections were equally available . Garth found an important example in Denham's Cooper's Hill ( 1642 , 1655 ) , and he had gone to school on Dryden's works , not only MacFlecknoe but also the ...
... kind of strongly thematic account I have given says ( to use a Gricean distinction ) very much more about what the poet does by fo- cusing his poem on the violence or the lock or literature than about what he does in focusing his poem ...
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 | |