Mock epic facts and quotes

What was the inaugural english example of the mock epic genre

Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe

are there classical examples

Yes - pseudo Homeric Batrachamyomachia (battles of frogs and mice) and Margites ( stupid man named margites)

Grandiloquent opening Mac Flecknoe

‘All humane things are subect to decay,/ And when Fate summonsm monarchs must obey’ 

What indicates Mac Flecknow as mock 

Subtitle ‘satyr’ and focus on ‘DUlness … full stupiditu’ 

Rawson 2010 about presence of heroism in mock epic

‘lingering quizzical presence’

Menainglessness of heroic battle in TRoL

5 = ‘Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown’

5 - ‘at her smile, the ebau revived again’

Is there a battle in Dunciad

NO - ‘bloodless swords and maces’ 1 - alike to PL angels ‘incapable of mortal injury’ 6 

Use of stylised language in Canto 4 of TRoL

Belindas anguish over stolen hair in 6fold anaphora - contr ‘Youthful kings; w ‘ancient ladies’ - contr hyperbolically w reminder of loss ‘ravished hair’ 

Pope puns in DUnciad -

Belinda admiring ‘the cosmetic powers’ = expect cosmic, esp as dressing table ‘in mystic order’ 1.

Regan 1979 structural parallels Dunciad and Aeneid

2 halves - journey wandering to fulfillment, alternating patterns, B1 and 3 = nighttie Dulness; temple. balance - wandeinrg through lOndon in first half like Od wandeirng - ‘O!when shall rise a monarch all our own!’ 1

Whats Popes preface and what does it do

‘Martin Scriblerus, of the poem’ - defends epic character of Dunciad ‘celebrateth the most grave and ancient of things, chaos, night, and Dulness’ - comic pairing 

heritage of mock epic in Margites - need for Pope to complete the set after translating Odyssey and Iliad. 

FInal lines of DUnciad

‘thy dread empire Chaos’ subsume ‘human spark’

How does Dryden do Miltonic sature in Mac Flecknow

Portrayal of Thomas Shadwell ‘High on a throne of his own labours rear’d = PL 2 ‘high on a throne of royal state’

Pope DUnciad B2 - obfuscating apparatus

‘branch of stux’ in thames ‘as idner seas Alpheus’ secret sluice/ bears pisa’s offerings to his Arethuse’

What does POpe say about this line in his apparatus, what omitted? 

Notes classical models, but omits most obv from Miltons Arcades 30-1 w exact rhyme between sluice … arethuse. ridiculing pedantry of contemp scholarship 

Who is satirised through Aristarchus

Richard Bentley - prosaical editor of PL

Pope and fictionality

in prefatory letter he assures of it - satirical commonpalce, suggests to Arabella Fermor of fictionality of charater but letter after enocurages liknking w relaity - Lord Petre’s theft of Arabella’s hair in summer 1711

What does Pope satirise in Dunciad Book 2

Epic games - publsihers Osborne and CUrrl in pissing contest. Curll ‘his rapid wae=ter sin thier passage burn’. in apparatus suggest maybe ref to venereal disease but then denies on account of auhtors humanity - adverb sirely 

Pope satirising writing for money 

Cibber ‘swearing and supperless’ 1. 

dates of TRoL

anon publ’d 1712 2 cantos

revised 1714 5 cantos

dates of DUnciad

1st vers 1728, no notesm name, target Lewis Theobald as king Dunce. 1729 Dunciad Variorum. 1742 4th book, revised 1743 recast Tibbald as Colley Cibber.