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The Dunciad
In Four Books
Edited by George Gilfillan
By Alexander Pope
Read by Denis Daly
Alexander Pope was fiercely critical of writers whom he considered to have little talent and whom he liked to nominate as dunces. His most encyclopedic examination of these apostles of dullness is the Dunciad, a long satirical saga first published in a three book version in 1728. A variorium edition followed shortly afterwards in 1729. In 1742 Pope added a fourth book and a new complete edition was published in 1743.
The concept of an excoriation of dullness in mock heroic form appears to have been inspired by John Dryden's MacFlecknoe or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S. (1682). Dryden's target was the poet and low-brow playright Thomas Shadwell, who later replaced Dryden as Poet Laureate in 1688.
In Pope's view dullness is at war with reason, and he nominates Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber as the champions of insipidity.
In the words of editor George Gilfillan: "The "Dunciad" is in many respects the ablest, the most elaborate, and the most characteristic of Pope's poems. In embalming insignificance and impaling folly he seems to have found, at last, his most congenial work."
