What kinds of people or groups of people are attacked in eighteenth century satire?
...fickle an issue as poetic status. Pope’s motivation was not jealousy or envy of Cibber, just the ridiculousness of his appointment. This alone though did not justify such a degradation of character. In truth, the original text of The Dunciad did not have Cibber as it’s hero, it was Pope’s newer edition of the text, The New Dunciad that promoted Cibber’s role. Pope’s satire of him ran deeper and more personal as his satires often did. Cibber had ridiculed Pope in a satirical poem and this was Pope’s come back. Retaliation against criticism and critics of the past was nearly always the power behind Pope’s poetry. He had endured it for fifteen years of his career and The Dunciad was very much his ultimate vengeance. Putting Cibber at the forefront would normally suggest that he was Pope’s most hated enemy, it is much more likely however, that he was an easy target as well as being one of his more recent critics. This rather forthright and aggressive form of retaliation was no doubt a finely tuned defence mechanism, honed through years of being the target of satire and other cruelty himself. A loathing of many of his contemporaries might be expected when one made this sweeping remark about Pope, “…As there is no creature so venomous, there is nothing so stupid and impotent as a hunch-back’d toad”. All this makes writers and poets of the eighteenth century appear like one big sparring club. A group producing written satire, but satire without a use all the same. In truth, much of the backstabbing existed alongside real social commentary. Pope’s dry aside that; ‘Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first’ (6:1) seems an overtly masked reference to the descent into low culture being perpetuated further by George II. This small opening remark seems to almost divert all blame away from the individuals Pope attacks on to the state of the monarchy and the ruling class. The fault for the likes of Cibber’s over inflated confidence and unsuitable status rests not with Cibber himself, it rests with those who appointed him and in doing so these leaders reinforce the idea of an uncultured and ‘dull’ society. For a work such as The Dunciad it would be easy to reel off a list of people being attacked but just because they are the individuals being satirised we mustn’t assume that the attack and the blame lays with them. Many critics refer to The Dunciad as a ‘Swiftian’ work. Could it be that Pope uses contemporary poets as a decoy for the real attack in a similar way to how Swift uses his fictional characters, particularly in Books one and three of his most successful work Gulliver’s Travels? In Lilliput, a society of small men that mirror the big men of Swift’s world in many of their obscure and pointless traditions the emperor is quite strikingly opposite to England’s monarch: He is taller by almost the breadth of my Nail, than any of his Court, which alone is enough to strike an Awe into the Beholders. His Features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian Lip and arched Nose, his Complexion olive, his Countenance erect, his Body and Limbs well proportioned, all his Motions graceful, and his Deportment majestick. (24-25:1) At this stage in Book One any reader who had already felt an incline that much of Swift’s description amounted to teasing satire of the modern ‘court’ might smile at the prospect of a handsome leader in place of the unattractive George I. However, does this ironic taunt amount to an attack? Pope and Swift might have called their monarch and ugly dunce under an opaque veil but like many of the characters in The Dunciad George I and George II seem to have been superficially ridiculed more than anything. In Swift we do see the jibes and allusion becoming more and more specific, for example, with reference to particular futile customs: There is likewise another Diversion which is only shewn before the Emperor and Empress, and first Minister, upon particular Occasions. The Emperor lays on a Table three fine silken Threads of six Inches long. One is Blue, the other Red, and the third Green. These Threads are proposed as Prizes for those Persons whom the Emperor hath a mind to distinguish by a peculiar Mark of his Favour. (32:1) The fact that Swift changed these colours from blue, red and green, to purple, yellow and white in the 1726 edition shows how clear the reference to the Orders of the Garter, the Bath and the Thistle was to the modern reader. Even once they had been changed similarities were still drawn with the Orders of Knighthood. To those modern readers this was obviously a satire of George I’s reintroduction of the Order of the Bath and the ‘prizes’ were bribes and pay offs. Still, this seems to be shrewd and insightful parody rather than full frontal attack. It could be considered more suggestion than statement. Swift covers his back by using a narrator and the character of Gullive...