Eighteenth-Century Satire Essays on Text and Context from Dryden to Peter Pindar

Howard D. Weinbrot here collects thirteen of his most important essays on Restoration and eighteenth-century British satire. Divided into sections on 'contexts' and 'texts', the essays range widely and deeply across the spectrum of satiric kinds, satirists, satires, and scholarly and critical problems. In 'Contexts', Professor Weinbrot discusses the pattern of formal verse satire of blame and praise popularized by Dryden in 1693 and influential throughout the next century, challenges the traditional view that Hprace and 'Augustanism' define eighteenth-century satire, and focuses on the vexed question of whether there was indeed a 'persona' or theory of masking at work in eighteenth-century satire. In 'Texts' he deals with several of the most important verse satirists and satires of the period and closely analyses them within their historical and artistic frameworks. Clearly written, learned, and often witty, this book is committed to critical inquiry that respects the integrity of its texts. It also emphasized the breadth of context that enriches our understanding of satire and the relationships among the nurturing culture, the producing poet, the poem producers, and the poem as received in its age.

Preface; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction: the achievement of Dryden's 'Discourse on Satyr'; Part I. Contexts: 1. The pattern of formal verse satire in the Restoration and the eighteenth century; 2. History, Horace and Augustus Caesar: some implications for eighteenth-century satire; 3. Masked men and satire and Pope: towards an historical basis for the eighteenth-century persona; Part II. Texts: 4. The swelling volume: the apocalyptic satire of Rochester's Letter from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country; 5. The 'Allusion to Horace': Rochester's imitative mode; 6. 'Natures holy bands' in Absalom and Achitophel: fathers and sons, satire and change; 7. The Rape of the Lock and the contexts of warfare; 8. 'Such as Sir Robert would approve'? Answers to Pope's answer from Horace; 9. The conventions of classical satire and the practice of Pope; 10. Persius, the opposition to Walpole, and Pope; 11. Johnson's London and Juvenal's third satire: the country as 'ironic' norm; 12. No 'mock debate': questions and answers in The Vanity of Human Wishes; 13. Pope, his successors, and the dissociation of satiric sensibility: an hypothesis; Notes; Index.

Howard D. Weinbrot here collects thirteen of his most important essays on Restoration and eighteenth-century British satire. Clearly written, learned, and often witty, this book emphasizes the breadth of context that enriches our understanding of satire and the relationships among the nurturing culture, the producing poet, the poem producers, and the poem as received in its age.