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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... stands on a par with the " new " historicism whose influence in eighteenth - century studies has been chiefly felt in the study of the novel . While the new historicists do not relegate particulars to the background , neither do they ...
... stand with aristocracy and wit and against the sober professionals of the City , the mock - epic strikes a notably bourgeois pose . This book is arrayed in two parts , organized by topics : one part focuses on places and one on persons ...
... stand the Augustan mock - epics , it is time to ask again those hard ques- tions about particulars that had been asked by the nineteenth - century critics — the very questions that had been asked by Dr. Johnson and by the dunces . We ...
... stand in the stead of the epic , a shadow — whether grotesque or exquisite — of its great original . What more nearly stands in stead of the Augustan epic are the great translations and , later , the novel . The genres whose role the ...
... stand for civil obedience and social stability , a well - reasoned defense of Garth's interests , those of his College , and more generally those of his class . At the center of that defense is a warning — a warning for his fellow phy ...
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 | |