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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... representation , especially in the judgments embod- ied and evoked by the poems ' representations . It presents an important opportunity to those who seek a truly historical poetics , for such a ma- terialist poetics was the special ...
... representation ( the " Poetical relation " ) and its effects on read- ers ( the moral instruction ) , and examine both in terms of a larger cul- tural semiotic that encompasses many discourses and social practices . The poetical ...
... representation that would have significance for much late Augustan satiric poetry . The Dis- pensary is especially useful for understanding these patterns of repre- sentation because it has virtually no mid - century readings . 14 If we ...
... actions but the personal and collective de- sires that the poets believed were the motive forces of their unheroic social antagonists . Those representations are a major expression of Introduction : 1: 1ntroduction: Moralizing the Song.
... representations are a major expression of a conservative ideology that opposed the increasing effort to legitimate self - interest as a natural and so morally neutral social force mediated chiefly through economic relations . Unable to ...
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 | |