ENTER BOOK I or BOOK II
The Purpose of the Project
The purpose of this site is to provide a user friendly version of the Dunciad. It is a selectively annotated version of Pope's 1728 Dunciad in Four Books. I should mention that in saying version I mean that the poem I present here does not contain Pope's annotations to his poem although I do refer to his annotations in areas where I feel they are essential to understanding the basic meaning of the poem. It is also "a" version in that Pope himself went through several editions of the poem changing it each time. The most significant change being in the final 1728 version where Pope added a forth book onto the previous three. Also, the reason I say "selective" annotations is, as I'm sure anyone who has read the poem will realize, attempting to add further annotations onto an already overly dense poem would ultimately defeat the purpose of this site as being user-friendly.
The World of the Dunciad therefore wishes to offer merely one of many possible paths through Pope's poem. This path centers mostly on the historical places and personages that in a Dantesque fashion crowd its pages. There are also some general explanatory notes and references to classical sources. For those seeking a more complete annotated version of Pope's poem I would heartily recommend Valerie Rimbold's wonderful book Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books.
Currently I have only completed the first two books of the poem and have only dealt with a fraction of the classical allusions in the text. I also would like to deal with the rich imagery of the poem in the future as well. I have done a fairly comprehensive survey of the historical references and have attached a user friendly bibliography of the major critical works on Pope's poem and its historical context.
The World of the Dunciad therefore wishes to offer merely one of many possible paths through Pope's poem. This path centers mostly on the historical places and personages that in a Dantesque fashion crowd its pages. There are also some general explanatory notes and references to classical sources. For those seeking a more complete annotated version of Pope's poem I would heartily recommend Valerie Rimbold's wonderful book Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books.
Currently I have only completed the first two books of the poem and have only dealt with a fraction of the classical allusions in the text. I also would like to deal with the rich imagery of the poem in the future as well. I have done a fairly comprehensive survey of the historical references and have attached a user friendly bibliography of the major critical works on Pope's poem and its historical context.
