Pope’s mock-epic
The Dunciad is one of his most difficult poems to understand, primarily because it was altered three times over fifteen years, with major alterations and the addition of a fourth book in the final publication. Many critics have often had trouble deciding just how much of Pope’s biography should be taken into account when reading the poem because of the nature of his relationship to Colley Cibber and the fact that the poem is clearly an attack on Cibber. Aubrey Williams points out at the very beginning of the introduction to his pivotal book on
The Dunciad that the poem “has impinged upon not only the artistic sensibilities of readers and critics, but upon their moral sensibilities as well” yet “the objections of the moralistic critic to the poem gain what relevance they have possessed principally from historical and biographical information about Pope and his contemporaries” (
Pope’s Dunciad 1). The poem is scathing and bitter in its attacks, and calls into question whether or not Pope is simply committing the same crimes that he accuses other writers of within the poem. Fredric V. Bogel points out that in the course of this critical discussion, “some have asserted that Pope suffers a kind of satiric contamination in the course of the poem, [. . .] and begins to display a touch of what he attacks; or that he simply enjoys the dunces, taking pleasure in the low liveliness and sheer fecal fun of the games in book 2” (844). Satire by its very nature is based on the circumstances of the time in which it is produced. The majority of critics have shunned any type of New Critical approach to the poem simply because satire does not lend itself well to that. History must be taken into account. With
The Dunciad, however, many critics have found the seriousness of tone that pervades the poem and the utterly hopeless apocalyptic ending to be paradoxical on primarily two levels.
One paradox stems from this question of the imitative fallacy raised by Williams, Bogel, and so many other critics. An examination of the third version of
The Dunciad will prove most useful primarily because it calls into question, more so than the original three-book versions, Pope’s encounter with the imitative fallacy. The problem is that neither of the options summed up by Bogel sufficiently address the problem of fallacy—they merely cave in to it. The final version of
The Dunciad, with the fourth book whose darkness and serious tone has been argued as bordering on outright hateful, demonstrates the concern of these critics most clearly. The solution to this paradox is in
the focus of the attacks and the actual object of satire. Colley Cibber is the Dunce in the third version, yet the poem, at some point in every book, moves beyond Cibber, and folds him into something much larger, making an entire social movement of what Pope perceived as not only terrible poetry, but the general degradation of culture the object of satire. A close reading of the text will demonstrate that the dunces themselves seem harmless, but it is precisely their blithe ignorance of what is arising from their actions that becomes catastrophic. It is the result of their actions (the production of a new social movement), not the dunces themselves that is the object of satire.
The second paradox is in regard to Cibber and his reputation. Some critics, such as Donald T. Siebert, Jr., refuse to simply “take Pope at his word” (206). The idea that “the dunces themselves may often appear more like dangerous enemies of civilization than garden-variety fools” is problematic (203). How can simple fools bring about the end of history and the end of existence? Siebert sees two points that the majority of Pope critics agree upon with regard to
The Dunciad: “(1) that Pope himself considered the dunces as a manifestation of some theological or metaphysical evil, as a real threat to the goodness and order of God’s universe, and (2) that the way in which Pope presented his victims was in fact the way they were; history vindicates Pope” (206). Siebert goes on to disagree with these critics. I, however, cannot completely disagree. It is evident that Pope considers
something in the poem evil and threatening. His depiction of the dunces, their actions and statements, however, is not what is evil. The dunces
themselves are not what is wholly evil because they have no
recognition of the consequences of their actions. They are blithely unaware. They have no malicious intent. Reading the poem this way gives Pope more latitude in his depiction of the dunces and allows for a more generous moral reading in terms of Pope’s possible motives and the imitative fallacy. As far as the second point is concerned, in some ways history
has vindicated Pope simply by virtue of the fact that his work has outlived the vast majority of those who are targeted in the poem. Following my explanation of the first point, if the dunces themselves are not evil, then Pope is fair in calling them out as simple fools. Especially with regard to Cibber, Pope presents a more or less accurate picture. Furthermore, why couldn’t Pope see all the dunces as not just simple fools but as an actual threat to goodness and order for the purposes of the satire? It is, of course, the satirist’s
duty to be a good and moral man, who exposes the vices of others and replaces them with virtue. Whether or not Pope replaces vice with any virtue, of course, presents another interpretive problem, but one of the major vices Pope exposes is the sheer ignorance of the dunces.
The term “social movement” as mentioned above refers to a number of things. It is a phenomenon that began before Pope was born.
The Dunciad addresses the movement in four parts: education, religion, science, and the arts. These parts are not necessarily addressed individually throughout the poem; rather, they are intertwined and are both causes and effects of the degradation of the other parts. Dryden confronts the problem with the arts, specifically satire, in his “A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire.” He undertakes what was called in England the lampoon, saying that it “is a dangerous sort of Weapon” and that authors “have no Moral right on the Reputation of other Men” (Dryden). Dryden continues to write, apparently in defense of his own work, that:
There are only two Reasons, for which we may be permitted to write Lampoons; and I will not promise that they can always justifie us: The first is Revenge, when we have been affronted in the same Nature, or have been any ways notoriously abus'd and can make our selves no other Reparation. [. . .] [T]he second Reason, which may justifie a Poet, when he writes against a particular Person [. . .] is, when he is become a Publick Nuisance. (Dryden)
Dryden claims in his explanation of the first reason that he very rarely sought revenge on anyone. Pope, having admired Dryden very much, agreed with Dryden’s view of lampooners and hack writers, as evidenced in the opening of his
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot: “What walls can guard me, or what Shades can hide? [. . .] Is there a Parson, much be-mus’d in Beer / A maudlin Poetess, a ryming Peer” (7, 15-6). Pope, famous at this time, is referring to being overrun by writers who want him to read their awful work—the types of lampooners Dryden is referring to. The drunk Parson, according to Williams, “suggest[s] the Rev. Laurence Eusden [. . .]; he was named poet laureate in 1718” (
Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope 199). Pope’s frustration with the laureateship seems to be at the center of his frustration with the writing “profession” and publishing industry at the time. Eusden preceded Colley Cibber as poet laureate.
Pope’s absolute disgust with these men, as exemplified in his poetry, must come from his high respect for the position they held. The laureateship, during Pope’s time, was not so old a tradition as far as English traditions go. Beginning around the time of Chaucer, it appears to have been a volunteer position at first. It was not until Dryden that the laureateship became the official position that is today. Pope may have seen Dryden as the father of the contemporary laureateship, but it is more likely that the position held its esteem with Pope based on its association with Chaucer, Spenser, and Jonson. For Pope to see the laureateship pass from the greatness of these men, including Dryden, to the likes of Colley Cibber was clearly infuriating, but the position’s esteem was not the only thing that was problematic for Pope; the Laureateship is an absolute fusion of arts and politics. For Cibber to be deemed worthy of such an influential position was ridiculous to Pope and brings Cibber the furthest into public light that he could possibly be.
Based on Dryden’s theory of lampooning,
The Dunciad should be justified. Whether Pope sought revenge against Cibber for a specific trespass would be difficult to answer; however, that Pope deemed Cibber as a public nuisance is obvious. But if
The Dunciad were simply Pope calling Cibber out as a public nuisance, then the poem would not be much different than Dryden’s
Mac Flecknoe in which Dryden does the same to Thomas Shadwell, the Poet Laureate of his time. This would not sufficiently address the way in which Pope makes a “social movement” the object of satire. Cibber is only
partly responsible for the arts—one part of the movement out of four. This leaves the reader with the problem set forth in the beginning. Pope is attacking not only the reputation of an individual, but of a multitude of people from a variety of disciplines. Did he see
everyone and
everything he attacks in
The Dunciad as a public nuisance? The simple answer would be yes, though Pope falls victim to the imitative fallacy regardless of his attempt to make that type of attack the object of his satire and appears to be horribly bitter, some would say immoral. However, even though those named in
The Dunciad were seen as public nuisances, it is the aftermath of their actions as a result of their ignorance that Pope attacks the strongest.
What in the world made Colley Cibber such an utterly detestable writer in Pope’s eyes? Charles Peavy, in his study of the reason why Pope replaced Lewis Theobald with Colley Cibber as Dunce, points out that, “Pope and Cibber had been at odds for at least a decade preceding the first
Dunciad of 1728” (17). The feud had been alive for some twenty-five years before the publication of the final
Dunciad. Cibber’s position as poet laureate could not have been the sole reason for Pope’s decision to make him dunce, but it certainly could be seen as the proverbial straw. Cibber was more commercially than critically successful. He was also notorious as the manager of Drury Lane and despised by playwrights—especially those whose work Cibber rejected, seemingly without reason. Pope was a great supporter of the theater and was an editor and part-collaborator on a few famous plays of the time. But beyond these surface level distastes lies something more. Peavy declares that these two men were simply diametrically opposed to one another: “Politically, socially, and psychologically they were antipodal: their family backgrounds were quite different; Pope was a Roman Catholic, Cibber was vehemently anti-Catholic. In addition, the lives of the two men were strangely intertwined, and a conflict arising from the meeting of these two divergent personalities was inevitable” (17). One possible explanation for Cibber’s placement as Dunce is that Pope had simply had enough of Cibber. This seems juvenial, but then Pope’s attacks on Cibber in
The Dunciad can be interpreted as such: “Nonsense precipitate, like running Lead/That slip’d thro’ Cracks and Zig-zags of the Head” (1.123-4). Pope also accuses Cibber of stealing work: “Next, o’er his Books his eyes began to roll/In pleasing memory of all he stole” (1.127-8). The resemblance of Cibber’s plays to other famous plays of his time is still being debated today. Regardless of whether or not he actually did, Pope clearly thought so.
This is the type of attack, however, that Siebert and others take issue with. This sort of “low blow” appears throughout the poem and brings up a very important question: How much of a fool was Colley Cibber really? As a theater manager he was very successful; however, he constantly rejected plays, including
The Beggar’s Opera, which Pope saw as “the disregard of merit and the rewarding of mediocrity” (Peavy 19). Cibber’s career and public persona as a writer is summed up in his infamous
Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber: Comedian. The title alone evokes notions of self-indulgence. Brian Glover points out that “On the one hand, Cibber [saw] his project as a record of his famous folly and vanity, dealing in self-indulgent ‘Impressions of my Mind’; on the other hand, [. . .] he claim[ed] objective authority as a historian. How can a man who describes himself as a self-centered fool, motivated by vanity, hope to be taken seriously as a judge of men and art” (524)? No doubt a question Pope likely asked, and no doubt the primary reason for Pope’s utter repulsion to the notion of Cibber as a talented writer, let alone deserving of the title Poet Laureate. Cibber viewed himself as the “fanciful object of his own history” (Glover 524). Pope makes Cibber the fool he always claimed to be. Cibber as King of the Dunces is an obvious choice.
However, Cibber’s historical persona does not seem to completely match what Pope has described in the poem. Cibber is a blundering fool in the poem, but he is also seemingly the source of all evil; he is “the Anti-Christ of wit” (
The Dunciad 2.15). The use of Biblical images and parallels to
Paradise Lost heightens the seriousness of what is being said in the poem. Pope is not simply expressing disgust with Cibber and the social movement that he satirically presides over; there is a genuine, grave concern for what is happening as evidenced in the Biblical images and parallels to
Paradise Lost. Williams points out that “From Pope’s parodying of Milton results a tacit suggestion that the
Dunciad, like
Paradise Lost, is about a war between good and evil” (131). Book II begins with such a parody of Milton. Cibber parallels Milton’s Satan. Book III begins with Cibber’s head in the goddess’ lap, an allusion to the Madonna with child. Cibber, however, is an inversion of the Christ figure. This inversion of the divine is manifested completely in Cibber, even down to his thoughts. The goddess tells Cibber “Each Monster meets his likeness in thy mind” (Pope 3.252) indicating that since Cibber is the Antichrist of wit, everything he imagines is monstrous and distorted: An inverted representation of reality. This is easily read as an exaggeration of Cibber’s historical persona; however, it is the ramifications of Cibber’s actions that bring about the most catastrophic moment in the poem. Pope is serious about the events in the poem, but only in regard to what they produce: the end of history and existence.
It would be difficult to believe that Pope saw Colley Cibber as the solitary source from whence all destruction and darkness is emitted. With regard to the arts, Pope takes on the entire publishing industry. In Book II, Pope further establishes the object of his satire as not just Cibber, but a whole host of other poets and booksellers. Pope uses Epic Games to satirize not just the people but the degradation of the society that they are involved in. Here, Pope focuses on people other than Cibber as satiric objects, which read collectively, produce the social movement as the single object of satire. The goddess of Dulness creates a phantom poet, whom booksellers chase. Pope names many of them; these names are part of the object of satire just as Cibber is. They chase the phantom, sliding through human waste, have a contest to see “who can tickle best” followed by a yelling contest, and finally a contest to see who can come up the brownest after diving into Fleet Ditch (2.196). The focus on so many different people as objects of satire forms the social movement they participate in as the true object of satire in the poem. The games themselves are meaningless and harmless. Yet the participants do not see that. They take them very seriously—they are ignorant of their own stupidity, a notion that Pope takes very seriously.
With regard to the other aspects of the social movement, Cibber cannot be seen as the sole object of satire either. Rather, Pope uses Cibber as a sort of litmus test to demonstrate just how far other social institutions have fallen and thus produced the Cibbers of the world. Education is one of the primary examples. Pope points to it explicitly as a reason for the existence and praise of poets such as Cibber:
Now leave all memory of sense behind:
How Prologues into Prefaces decay,
And these to Notes are fritter’d quite away:
How Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail:
How, with less reading than makes felons scape,
Less human genius than God gives an ape,
[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .]
‘Twixt Plautus, Fletcher, Shakespear, and Corneille,
Can make a Cibber, Tibbald, or Ozell. (1.276-82, 284-6)
The lack of rigor in learning is a major contributor to the degradation of his society. Students look to the indexes of books for the answers rather than actually reading. Pope blames the creation of bad poets like Cibber and Lewis Theobald (Tibbald) on this kind of degenerate learning. The arts and education are thus intertwined. Science is also tangled into this passage, and its part in the social movement seems to be brought on by this shift in education. It is “Index-learning” that has control over science. Thus, poor education contributes to both the degradation of the arts and science.
In Book III, Pope attacks science and religion together using another historical figure: J. Henley the Orator. Pope writes of Henley in his note that he “preached on the Sundays upon Theological matters, and on the Wednesdays upon all other sciences. Each auditor paid one shilling. He declaimed some years against the greatest persons, and occasionally did our Author that honour” (347) meaning that Henley railed against Pope at some point. The lines of the poem give a sharp picture of what Williams is referring to:
But, where each Science lifts its modern type,
Hist’ry her Pot, Divinity his Pipe,
While proud Philosophy repines to show,
Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below (3.195-8)
Pope begins this short portrait of Henley with a definition of science that is a mixture of history, theology, and philosophy. They are “friends,” so to speak, raising their glasses and tipping their pipes to one another. Henley is standing bent over, exposing his behind, “Tuning his voice” (200). Pope continues to describe him: “Oh great Restorer of the good old Stage / Preacher at once, and Zany of thy age” (3.205-6). Pope’s contempt for Henley is obvious, but it is how Henley speaks about the great scientific minds of the age that demonstrate how Pope is using this portrait of Henley to satirize the turn downward that science has taken as part of the social movement:
‘Tis yours, a Bacon or a Locke to blame,
A Newton’s genius, or a Milton’s flame.
But oh! with One, immortal one dispense,
The source of Newton’s Light, of Bacon’s Sense! (3.215-8)
Henley’s sermon ends with a call to the dunces: “Persist, by all divine in Man unaw’d / But, ‘Learn, ye Dunces! not to scorn your God” (223-4) referring to Cibber as their God. They do not need Bacon, Newton, Locke, Milton, or
any of the greatest minds of the last hundred years because they have Colley Cibber’s example to follow. The irony is that Cibber is
not actually their “god”—Dulness is.
This portrait of Henley provides a clearer picture of the combination of severity and satire, but in order to reconcile the two, the focus of the satire must be read as the
effects of Henley’s speech, not the speech itself. The speech is one of many things that contributes to the cataclysmic ending of the piece. The speech blinds the dunces to what is really going on; they see Cibber as their leader rather than Dulness, so they are unable to see the apocalypse that is coming as a result of their actions. Pope’s depiction of Richard Busby, a “famous headmaster of Westminster School” (Williams
Poetry and Prose 360), further establishes education as part of the social movement and intertwines art and education yet again. Busby declares proudly, “Since Man from beast by Words is known / Words are Man’s province, Words we teach alone” (Pope 4.149-50). The meanings of words are not important to Busby. What is more important is that students know what the words are so that they can sound smart when they speak. But it is empty. Busby continues:
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of Sense,
We ply the Memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain,
Confine the thought, to exercise of breath;
And keep them in the pale of Words till death. (4.155-60)
The students do not learn what is important; they learn what is fashionable. Their heads are filled not only empty words, but empty knowledge of classic poets so that they may have “endless matter for Conversation, and Verbal amusement their whole lives” (Pope 360). With this empty information, Busby is confident that the students will still make excellent poets and that his method is surely the best:
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A Poet the first day, he dips his quill;
And what the last? a very Poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder House or Hall. (4.162-6).
Busby’s padlock is the prison that this kind of education has put the students in. It is jingling because the students’ “instructors contrive to make the Words jingle in rhyme or metre” (Pope 360). The students are being taught to use the meaningless words to write poetry. Ironically, Busby acknowledges that this is only effective inside the walls of his institution. As soon as the students leave, their poetry is no longer brilliant. He names a few famous students:
There truant Wyndham ev’ry Muse gave o’er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a Wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pult’ney lost! (4.167-70)
All of these men became dukes, members of parliament, or gained other such titles. The effects of this kind of education now become clear. These men are partly in charge of running the country, yet they have had a completely empty education. Their words and heads are completely empty.
Science and religion become tangled again toward the end of Book IV as Dulness prepares for her apocalypse unbeknownst to the dunces. In lines 459-93, an anonymous clergyman gives a speech about the privilege science has over religion. It is important that the clerk is anonymous and not someone taken from history as the other speakers have been. This speech is completely different than the others; the speaker’s anonymity furthers this distinction. The speech in this case is
against the pursuits of Dulness; however, the clerk is still unknowingly helping to enact the apocalypse because he promotes a deism that still puts God second to science. Prior to his speech, The Goddess has just finished speaking to two naturalists:
‘O! would the Sons of Men once think their Eyes
And Reason giv’n them but to study Flies!
See Nature in some partial narrow shape,
And let the Author of the Whole escape:
Learn but to trifle; or who most observe,
To wonder at their Maker, not to serve.’ (4.453-8)
She is calling scientists and naturalists to abandon their deism and belief in God completely without thinking about it at all. She wants them not to serve their maker, but to wonder how or if he exists. She wants them to conceptualize nature as something other than Creator-made, thus letting God escape from science. Science, for the Goddess, has no need for religion, not even a religious belief that holds God as apart from humanity and the universe. The clerk disagrees, and replies:
Let others creep by timid steps, and slow,
On plain Experience lay foundations low,
By common sense to common knowledge bred,
And last, to Nature’s Cause thro’ Nature led.
All-seeing in they mists, we want no guide,
Mother of Arrogance, and Source of Pride!
We nobly take the high Priori Road,
And reason downward, till we doubt of God. (4.465-72)
The clerk criticizes this notion abandoning God completely calling it arrogant and prideful. He believes that the foundation of plain experience is not good enough. The road he speaks of is described in Pope’s footnote: “[T]hey who take this high Priori [. . .] Road (such as Hobbs, Spinoza, Des Cartes, and some better Reasoners) for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in Mists, or ramble after Visions which deprive them of all sight of their End, and mislead them in the choice of the wrong means” (4.471). The clerk is angry with the Goddess for suggesting scientists abandon God without reason. However, his “high Priori Road” is not much different. It still calls for an eventual dismissal of God, just through reasoned means. He describes what he and his group of scientists do:
Make Nature still incroach upon his plan;
And shove him off as far as e’er we can:
Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place;
Or bind in Matter, or diffuse in Space.
Or, at one bound o’er-leaping all his laws,
Make God Man’s Image, Man the final Cause. (4.473-8)
The clerk asserts that as long as God is dismissed through scientific means, then that is okay. The clerk is “one of deistical bent” meaning he believes in a God that created the universe, but since then is completely apart from it (Williams 371). The final line describes what his type of science accomplishes: God is whatever Man decides he is through science, and Man is the ultimate purpose of creation. This is ironic on two levels. First, he has unwittingly aligned himself with Dulness. He thinks he has differentiated himself from her by claiming he has reached his conclusion through scientific means, but it is the same conclusion. Second, in the context of the poem, Man is the final cause in the sense that the men of this social movement Pope has outlined throughout the poem are the final cause of the apocalypse.
The example of the anonymous clerk perfectly describes the ignorance of the dunces. It is so overwhelming that even the clerk who thought he was set against the Goddess is unwittingly aiding her. These speeches and portraits, along with the many others, unintentionally result in the apocalypse. The speakers and trespassers themselves have no idea that it is coming. Even the speaker is unable to remain outside of its power as he has throughout the rest of the poem. The final stanza is testament to that:
In vain, in vain, — the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow’r.
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of
Night Primœval, and of
Chaos old! (4.627-30)
The blithe ignorance of the dunces is so pervasive that not even the speaker can resist or escape its consequences. The final four lines describe an evil and a darkness that is completely absolute:
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor’d;
Light dies before they uncreating word;
They hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries All. (4.653-6)
This absolute and cataclysmic ending would seem inappropriate if the dunces
knew they were bringing it about. If this had been their plan all along, then many critics, the moralists described by Williams, and those who refuse to take Pope at his word, would have ample ground to stand on in criticizing Pope. However, this was
not the design of the dunces. One could argue that the Goddess Dulness had this apocalypse in mind from the beginning—that would make perfect sense. The progenitor of this kind of evil could never convince the simple dunces to agree to go along with such a plan. She had to disguise it and make her minions blind to it. Colley Cibber becomes a foolish and simple-looking front for a more dastardly and severe purpose. His disguise is the social movement, summed up in the lines just prior to the finale:
Physic of
Metaphysic calls for aid on
Sense! See
Mystery to
Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares
Morality expires. (4.645-50)
Just as these are tangled up throughout the poem as both causes and effects of the degradation of the other parts, here they grasp at each other to try and save themselves from the darkness and chaos they see coming. In vain. They collapse under the weight of their entanglement.
The two paradoxes discussed at the beginning are remedied through reading Dulness as the cause of all evil and the social movement as the object of satire rather than Cibber and his dunces as both. The poem makes it clear that Pope felt Cibber had not one original thought in his body. Pope would have never given Colley Cibber, or any other dunce for that matter, credit for coming up with so cunning and complex a plan. Rather, it makes much more sense in light of Pope’s history with Cibber to read his role in this as simply foolish and ignorant—part of the disguise Dulness uses to bring the apocalypse. Cibber’s desire to be seen as a fool and the object of his own history finally catches up with him. And when it does, history ends.
Works Cited
Bogel, Fredric V. “Dulness Unbound: Rhetoric and Pope’s Dunciad.” PMLA. 97 (Oct 1982): 844-55.
Dryden, John. “A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire.” 1693. Ed. Jack Lynch. 28 Apr 2008.
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Glover, Brian. “Nobility, Visibility, and Publicity in Colley Cibber’s ‘Apology.’” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 42 (Summer 2002): 523-39.
Peavy, Charles D. “Pope, Cibber, and the Crown of Dulness.” The South Central Bulletin. 26.4 (Winter 1966): 17-27.
Pope, Alexander. The Dunciad. 1743. Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope. Ed. Aubrey Williams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969. 295-378.
Siebert, Donald T. “Cibber and Satan: The Dunciad and Civilization.” Eighteenth-Century Studies. 10 (Winter 1976-7): 203-21.
Williams, Aubrey. Pope’s Dunciad. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1955.
Williams, Aubrey, ed. The Dunciad. By Alexander Pope. 1743. The Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1969. 295-378.
