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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... ( words , images , figures ) as parts of an intricate web connecting the social facts of persons and places with the " prosaic " par- ticulars of history . Doing so , it shows how the poems themselves sub- vert any easy distinction ...
... words are the last parts , which give beauty and colouring to the piece . —Dryden , " A Parallel of Poetry and Painting " ( 1695 ) Take out of any old Poem , History - books , Romance , or Legend , ( for instance Geffry of Monmouth or ...
... words , " and other aspects of " colouring , " which were , as Dryden says , " the last parts . ” How they came to be the first parts in mock - epic narrative is the story of this chapter . Precept and Example , Allegory and Action When ...
... words . Action ; that Historical Actions were too particular to give general Instructions , and consequently , that the Action , which is the Subject of an Epick Poem , must be general ; that is , feign'd , or , in other words , a Fable ...
... word ( the poet , he says , " nothing affirmeth " ) , for Sidney as for Restoration critics , the many powers of poetry are con- sequent to its one great end , to move that it might instruct.8 Their question was not our question — What ...
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 | |