Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Alexander Pope published The New Dunciad in 1742 which was a sequel to the first three books he first published in 1728. In 1743, just six months before his death, he published The Dunciad in Four Books containing a revised version of the original three books and a slightly revised version of the fourth book with revised commentary and arguments at the beginning of every book. Pope dedicated this mock epic to his friend Jonathan Swift, a great satirist who had worked with Pope as Marcus Scriblerus in the Scriblerus Club.
Book 4 contains 656 lines composed in end-rhyming heroic couplets. Pope used metaphors, allegories, allusions, caesura, anaphora, imagery, symbolism, personification, and chiasmus to perfection. In Book 3, the poet mentioned that in the future, Queen Dulness will rule not only the Operas, Theatres, poems, and other literature, but her significance will be deep enough to affect the court. In Book 4, he mentions that effect and alludes to Robert Walpole too.
Summary and Analysis of The Dunciad Book 4
Book 4 depicts the situation after the thorough win of the goddess of Dulness over science, logic, reason, wit, maths, rhetoric, morality, and order, and now the Night, Chaos, and Dulness rule over the world. The narrator is witness to all these changes and he is a subject of Chaos. He is not sure if he will be favored by Chaos and thus, he invokes Chaos and the Night as his muses to get support. "Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night! ... Suspend a while your force inertly strong, / Then take at once the Poet and the Song" The narrator understands his tenuous position. It is the era of the tyranny of Dulness and Chaos, it is the period of Night and there is a threat even to the telling of the story of Dulness.
At the end of Book 3, Cibber got pensive and threatened as he observed the future from Mount of Vision in the Underworld and listened to the prophecies by the monsters of Chaos and beasts of Night. Now all those prophecies have come to pass.
King Cibber is sitting in the lap of the goddess Dulness who appears much more strong. Science is chained near her feet and she uses Science as her footrest. Wit is sitting near her foot in complete silence fearing torture and exile. Logic has been chained and gagged and Rhetoric is lying naked on the ground. There’s the naked dead body of Morality that has been killed after being “drawn” or stretched at either end of her body by ropes. Chaos overwhelmed and defeated Order and imprisoned Science, Wit, Logic, Morality, and Rhetoric. All the prisoners fear and comply with Queen Dulness and who doesn’t dies like Morality. Math is still untied but only because Chaos has already drawn her mad. All the Muses of arts and science have been imprisoned and Chaos and Night rule over arts culture, and sciences now. Pope personifies Science, Maths, Virtues, and Arts as servants of Order and signifies the importance of the past. While all of them die or become powerless, History remains sober and optimistic towards the future “But sober History restrain'd her rage, / And promis'd Vengeance on a barb'rous age.”
Eliza, the voluptuous poetess is now a Harlot of Chaos who announces that soon the stubborn and resistant Muses will be tortured into submission and then Chaos shall reign fully. However, she is worried about Music, the most seductive muse of all. She warns that dangerous Music may seduce Sense and Order to raise a rebellion and thus, she advises the goddess of Dulness to ban great musicians like Handel (George Frederick Handel) from the shores of Britain. Dulness appreciates the Harlot for her vision and bans Handel. The Harlot gathers all the Dunces and compels them to discourage and abort the spread of the arts and sciences.
The Dunces then capture the souls of writers and thinkers who were yet free from the clutches of Dulness like Shakespeare, Jonson, and Milton. Pope uses allegory to attack the over-analysis of the works of these writers by his contemporaries that degrade the artfulness of their works.
Dulness then orders a new decree to “revive the Wits” (University Wits) so that they may be attacked by her army of Dunces and critics to be murdered and cut into pieces. “When Dulness, smiling — "Thus revive the Wits! / But murder first, and mince them all to bits.” Pope uses chiasmus here. "Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits, / A Wit with Dunces, and a Dunce with Wits."
In the court of Queen Dulness, a huge crowd wishes to address her and this creates a conundrum as all are in a chaotic spell. Dulness comforts them and says that she will listen to all. A young, pale boy gets the first chance to offer respect to Dulness. He praises the grammar school burdening young minds with mere jargon and words. This keeps people of intellect remain confused in words and thus, they get no chance to learn anything meaningful. Sans true knowledge, they remain dull and dwell within the Goddess’ grasp for the rest of their lives.
“To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence, / As Fancy opens the quick springs of Sense, // We ply the Memory, we load the brain, / Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain,// Confine the thought, to exercise the breath; / And keep them in the pale of Words till death.//”
The goddess is pleased by his speech and wishes that the teachings of grammar schools may reach and affect each University and Institution, each court, senate, and throne.
Next comes Aristarchus, the representative of Universities. He informs that in Universities, scholars are not only being burdened by mere words but are forced to pine over tiny details of spelling, grammar, and history. Thus they suffer much more confusion and burden on their minds and never get a chance to attain any knowledge. Soon a group of young men from abroad comes forward and informs that they went to attain knowledge but they have learned nothing, lost much of their earlier knowledge, and have succeeded only in broadening their palates as opposed to their minds while abroad. Dulness is too happy to know all this. She wraps him in her veil and blesses him with “Want of Shame.”
Pope offers an irony here. Aristarchus was a brilliant scholar, the first to raise the issue of the heliocentric structure of our solar system. Copernicus himself credited him for the heliocentric model.
Then Dulnesses notices many lazy young men scattered around her appearing confused about what to do next. Annius then comes forward and excels in crafty duplicity of antique items. He requests Dulness to allow him to make those men skilled in his duplicitous work. However, Mummius, a competitor of his interrupts and claims that he should be the one attaining those new apprentices. Dullness isn’t impressed by any of them and she appeases them with other chaotic talks. They go away without having any new apprentices.
A few people from a strange tribe visit her court and one of them says that he had a beautiful flower named Caroline that enchanted him and all others. But one other man from his tribe killed Caroline. He demands the murderer of Caroline must be punished by Dulness. The other person however defends himself well and says that he was just pursuing a beautiful butterfly that humped from one flower to another. Dulness then calms both of them down and asks them to take those lazy confused young men in their wings and teach them the intricacies of such small bits of nature from flower to butterfly. However, she warns them both to not let these young men learn anything important other than those dull bits of nature so that they may never get time and enthusiasm to learn anything important.
A Clerk of the group of ‘Minute Philosophers and Free Thinkers’ comes forward and begs Dulness for the death of Morality and Faith so that Dunces may establish themselves as creators of all. Then Silenus comes forward with a group of young men ready to be in service of Dulness. She calls for her high priestess Magus who comes with a cup containing a mixture that will rid the drinker of all of their obligations and duties to those he has once known. Every one of the group drinks it and then Dulness “confers her Titles and Degrees” upon her servants including priests, botanists, Freemasons, and others.
The goddess of Dulness then yawns and nobody could ignore her yawn as it brings the complete destruction of Order and the whole world under the rule of Chaos and the poem ends as “universal Darkness buries all.”
“More she had spoke, but yawn’d—All nature nods: / What mortal can resist the yawn of Gods?” As Dulness yawns, she puts everyone in slumber (people at the churches, chapels, and schools, soldiers in the army, and, in general, the whole nation).
“Even Palinurus nodded at the helm,” Plarimus is a figure from Ovid’s The Aeneid who was the helmsman in Aeneas’ ship. While driving the ship he falls asleep at the crossing. Pope uses Palinurus as an allusion to Robert Walpole who, being the Prime Minister was the “helmsman” of England at that time. However, there is resistance, some people are still sane and oppose Dulness with their wit. The poet’s wit is keeping the readers awake against the ill-effect of Dulness.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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