The Dunciad Literary Elements

“The Dunciad” was written by Alexander Pope. The speaker is an omniscient third-person voice. In the first three books, the speaker's voice shifts from one which praises Dulness, Jove, and Fate, and is free to relate the events of the poem. In Book IV, the voice shifts, and the speaker pleads to be allowed to speak—signaling a shift in the power of Chaos and Dulness.

This poem is a mock-heroic poem, satirically depicting the transformation and ascension of the banal "hero" Bayes into Cibber, the King of Dulness. Rhyming couplets largely utilizing iambic pentameter allow Pope to satirize the contemporary age, drawing the reader directly into the kingdom of Dulness' predictable rhythm.

This poem is full of metaphors that operate on many different scales. The epic metaphor running through the entirety of the poem, which indeed functions as an overarching allegory, depicts the current community and practice of writing in England as a kingdom ruled over by the personified goddess "Dulness."

Similes include the comparison of ‘Bards’ to ‘Proteus’; later the power of the Goddess of Dulness is compared to Cimon. Most of the metaphors and similes used in the poem are meant to add to the hyperbole within Pope's work, increasing its stakes and ridiculousness. For example, Curll is described as "Wide as a windmill" (ln. 66) in Book II during his race, and the phantom poet he is chasing has skin likened to "a dun nightgown" (ln. 38), meant to exaggerate his ephemerality. Other similes and metaphors are meant to create a sense of Dulness' sway, control, and following, and often are meant to create disturbing images for the reader, like when Dulness is repeatedly compared to a queen bee surrounded by her buzzing hive. Other metaphors and similes serve to depict abstract concepts about topics like learning and dullness. In Book IV, for example, we are told about the "door of learning," which under Dulness is never allowed to "stand too wide" (ln. 153-154). While these metaphors are either constant, repeated sparsely, or appear only once, they are often meant to heighten the disturbing and unnatural quality of this world or make tangible, and thus more apparently threatening, the abstract concepts so critical to Pope's message.

This poem contains countless examples of alliteration and assonance. Some important examples include ‘Mighty mother,’ ‘brazen, brainless brothers,' ‘Medleys, Merc’ries, Magazines,’ ‘heavy harvest,' ‘broad banners and broad faces,' ‘pensive Poets painful,' ‘she saw slow,' ‘breeding breast,’ ‘where wretched withers, ward,' ‘King Colley Cries,' 'hockley hole’ and many others. Some of Pope's alliteration is used to mimic the events in the scene for the reader, pulling them into the world he has created. One example of this occurs at the end of Book II, where "Soft creeping words on words the sense compose" (II, ln. 389) as the characters in the story are being lulled to sleep. The repeated "s" sounds create a kind of soft hushing sound, luring the reader closer to sleep, as well.

This poem is a satire, which is defined as the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. In essence, Pope's entire work is ironic, written in a voice praising Dulness while in reality using other literary devices like hyperbole, bathos, and allegory to convey to the reader that what is being said is not in fact what the author intends us to think, also called verbal irony. There are some moments of pure irony within the text, like when Pope writes that Dulness "Then raptures high the seat of Sense o'erflow, / Which only heads refin'd from Reason know" (III, 5-6). Pope in this poem strives to overflow the senses for the reader, providing a host of sensory depictions, including sights, sounds, and textures. This suggestion that somehow those with reason (like Pope, or, presumably, the reader) cannot create or experience the sensory overload is deeply ironic.

Mock-heroic poem.

The poem celebrates the Goddess of Dulness and her followers as they spread the power of dullness in their Kingdom in Great Britain. Largely, the events revolve around major landmarks in London, such as Fleet Ditch, St. Mary's, and Ludgate Prison. However, the geography of Greek and Roman mythology comes into play as well with Bayes' trip to the underworld and references to Mt. Olympus.

The poem contains a biting satire of contemporary society and the dull poets like Theobald, Cibber, and countless others. While on the surface, the tone largely seems complimentary of Dulness, even worshipful, the poem's bathos, hyperbole, humor, and references tell us that the true tone is one of parody and satire.

As it is a mock-heroic poem, the supposed hero or protagonist is, in reality, the antagonist. Here, Theobald (the "hero") is the antagonist as he becomes the new king of dullness.

The major conflict centers around Britain's entrance into a new era of Dulness and the struggle between Order and Chaos for control of Britain's intellectual and cultural life. This is to be an era ushered in by a new king, in this case, King Cibber (or Theobald in the earlier versions of the poem). The central conflict of the first three books is to select, anoint, and prepare the new King for the world Dulness has chosen him to help create. By the fourth book, we are simply told of Chaos' victory and offered no immediately opposing force, revealing the hopelessness of the situation.

The climax of the poem occurs when the new King of Dulness is forced to encounter a vision of the impacts of his reign in one of his dreams. Faced with the force of chaos and all it destroys and dulls, Cibber ends Book III with cries of 'Enough! Enough!,' signaling that perhaps even he is not ready to face this new era. Book IV, which vividly illustrates the reality of the world King Cibber faces in his dream, is largely a denouement predicted by the early parts of the text.

Book III foreshadows Book IV, showing how Dulness has always dominated human history. We see the visions of King Cibber bringing about the total reign of Chaos in Britain. While this may be a dream, we know to a degree that this will come to pass when we are told that from Cibber "All nonsense thus, of old or modern date, / Shall in thee centre, from thee circulate. / For this our Queen unfolds to vision true / Thy mental eye, for thou hast much to view" (III, 59-62). Though we know this to be a dream, Pope also makes it clear that the reader will inevitably find these visions of Dulness very real in the present, just as they have been in the past.

Pope often uses bathos and understatement to create crude humor that lends a greater sense of impropriety to the world of Dulness. For example, in Book II he describes the human waste that Curll slips in as a "lake" made by his wife after eating. We know what Pope is describing, but this euphemistic approach often creates a level of absurdist comedy that adds to the reader's disgust with this world. This extends to sexual undertones in parts of Pope's work as well, like when he describes how Curll had often "fish'd [Cloacina's] nether realms for wit," both a metaphor and a subtle double entendre creating an aura of disgust using smell around the creative act between dull writers and their muses.

The poem is packed with allusions to the printing world of London through geographic locations like Drury-Lane and Grub Street. It also contains allusions to Greek and Roman creative traditions and epics like the Aenied and the Odyssey through the structure of the hero's journey, as well as Orpheus' descent into the underworld guided by Sybil. While Pope packs the poem with references to his contemporary time, long since forgotten by ours, we are still able to see the positions Pope gives his personal literary and intellectual adversaries in the realm of Dulness. One example occurs in Book IV when the flower destroyed by one of the tribesmen is named Caroline, a reference to The Princess of Wales Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II. She was a patron of Pope's, but upon coming to the throne could no longer support him, which Pope viewed as a personal attack. Some critics have also theorized that Dulness is modeled after Caroline. There are many examples like this, including references to figures like Elkanah Settle and Edmund Curll.

As it is a mock-heroic poem, so all the names like Plautus, Swift, Tate and many others are used for their works. Most of the metonymy used by Pope in this poem is rooted in the names of places or people, like "Whitehall" for the government and elite power in London or the goddess Cloacina as a stand-in for the sewer system. The name Caxton is used for printing because Caxton was the first printer to print work in English. Caesar’s roars are used for bravery and King John is for silence. Ambrose’s Thule is used as the example of poor and incomplete writing. Some of these examples will be lost on contemporary readers because we cannot know every name Pope references, but geography is clearly important to him. "Rome" often stands in for the Catholic Church in the case of religious topics in the poem, which is particularly important to note given that Pope was a Catholic and often discriminated against in Protestant England.

We can find many instances of personification in this poem. First of all, Dulness has been personified as a goddess. Her Subordinate is Folly, who has four guardians; then Virtue, Fortitude, Calm Temperance and Prudence are personified satirically as the representation of four pillars of human folly. Poetic Justice is personified as one who has been accused of transforming lies into truths. Mathematics, Religion, Virtue, History, Morality, Reason, and others are all personified in Book IV as well. Pope also makes use of the classical trope in which the arts are personified as muses.

Much of Pope's poem relies upon exaggeration. In Book II, having writers dive to the deepest parts of the Thames, going so far as to run into the river that runs through the underworld, is clearly hyperbole meant to depict the ridiculousness of the task and its symbolic and satirical nature. Instances like this frequently reappear in Book II, for example, the moment when an entire audience is put to sleep by the reading of dull works. Other moments of hyperbole, however, are meant to convey not just ridiculousness, but rather the extreme stakes that Pope feels the world of writing is facing. In Book IV, Pope tells us that Morality dies at the hands of Dulness' servants, Chicane and Casuistry—an extreme claim about the consequences of bad writing and its effect on the culture as a whole. Hyperbole, then, works not just to tell the audience that Pope is using satire, but that his message is of critical importance for the intellectual soul of his country.

There are a few instances of onomatopoeia in the text, for example, "hisses," "hush’d," "cracks," and "zig-zag," but Pope largely relies on alliteration to convey sounds rather than direct onomatopoeia.