This is a study of mock-epic poetry in English, French, and German from the 1720s to the 1840s. While mock-heroic poetry is a parodistic counterpart to serious epic, mock-epic poetry starts by parodying epic but moves on to much wider and richer literary explorations; it relies heavily on intertextual allusion to other works, on narratorial irony, on the sympathetic and sometimes libertine presentation of sexual relatons, and on a range of satirical devices. It includes well-known texts (Pope's Dunciad, Byron's Don Juan, Heine's Atta Troll) and others which are little known (Ratschky's Melchior Striregel, Parny's La Guerre des Dieux). It owes a marked debt to Italian romance epic (especially Ariosto). The study places these texts in the literary context of the decline of serious epic, which helped mock epic to flourish, and of the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' which questioned the authority of Homer's and Virgil's epics; and it relates their substance to contemporary debates about questions of religion and gender.

The Dunciad in Four Books of 1743 was the culmination of the series of Dunciads which Alexander Pope produced over the last decade and a half of his life. It comprises not only a poem, but also a mass of authorial annotation and appendices, and this authoritative edition is the only one available which gives all the verse and the prose in a clearly laid-out form, with a full modern commentary. Accessibly presented on the same page as Pope’s text are explanatory notes, written in a style adapted to the needs of undergraduate readers, but still comprehensive enough to address the interests of scholars. The many books and pamphlets to which Pope refers have been examined in detail, and the commentary takes advantage of the fifty years’ scholarship on literary, bibliographical, cultural and political aspects of the period which has accumulated since James Sutherland’s The Dunciad, volume five of the Twickenham Edition. A substantial introduction offers a stimulating and helpful approach to the work, and the bibliography includes extensive suggestions for further reading.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the most important English poet of the 18th century, as well as an essayist, satirist, and critic. Many of his sayings are still quoted today. His Essay on Criticism shaped the aesthetic views of English Neoclassicism, while his Essay on Man reflected the moral views of the Enlightenment. He participated fully in the critical debates of his time and was one of the few poets who supported himself through his writing. This reference conveniently summarizes his life and works. Included are several-hundred alphabetically arranged entries on Pope's works, subjects that interested him, historical events that impacted Pope's life and work, cultural terms and categories, Pope's family members and acquaintances, major scholars and critics, and various other topics related to his writings. The entries reflect current scholarship and cite works for further reading. The encyclopedia also provides a chronology and concludes with a selected, general bibliography. Because of Pope's central importance to the Enlightenment, this book is also a useful companion to 18th-century literary and intellectual culture.

In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer’s book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.

Redefinition of the Augustan age as a 'four nations' history using popular literary sources.