Dunciad by Alexander Pope: The Literary Topography of Eighteenth-Century London, The

Introduction

The Dunciad, an influential mock-epic satirical poem by Alexander Pope (1688–1744), offers a multifaceted depiction of eighteenth-century London as a place of corruption through the use of grotesquery, satire, irony, and banter. The general aim of all versions of the poem (first version published in 1728, subsequent “Variorum” version in 1729, The Dunciad in Four Bookspublished in 1743) is to ridicule a contemporary culture influenced by the availability of print; the abundance of mediocre authors, greedy booksellers, and pedantic scholars; the corrupting influence of the Whig party; and the omnipresence of financial motivation. All these factors point to the urban environment as important in generating the experience of modernity. In that sense, it is an early poem about the modern city seen as a source of dangerous cultural tendencies, and its account of urbanity is interlaced with its indirect critique of early capitalism, which privileges commercial interests over...