Pope's War with the Dunces

Pope’s War with the Dunces: Mapping the Public in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain examines Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, a work boasting the largest number of identifiable characters in English literature. By focusing on the role played by cultural periphery (what Pope called “dunces”) in launching new fashions and ideological trends, Baird sheds new light on publicness as an emerging categor...