Rereading Pope’s The Dunciad

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Published: Jan 1, 2013

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Su Yong

Abstract

This paper studies the interaction between the prose portion and the verse portion of the variorum edition of Alexander Pope’s The New Dunciad and its indebtedness to the tradition of Menippean satire. Then, it uses Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque and James Frazer’s Saturnalian myth to explain how miseducation leads to corruptions in different domains of culture and eventually the annihilation of civilization in The New Dunciad.

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No. 1 (2013): Thoughts 2013
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Articles

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Author Biography

Su Yong

Su Yong received her BA, MA, and Ph.D in English literature from Peking University, China. She is currently an Associate Professor at the English Department, Peking University. Her research interest is in eighteenth-century English literature.

References

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