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 "e;dunces"e;) in launching new fashions and ideological trends, Baird sheds new light on publicness as an emerging category at...