Pope Pynchon

Cloacal investigations

The Dunciad is the epic of dunces, as the Aeneid is the epic of Aeneas and the Iliad is the epic of Ilium, as Troy is sometimes known. Dunces are idiots, stupid people, fools, dimwits—the people Pope sees around him, the poets and playwrights, scholars and churchmen, the arbiters of taste and morals, the dramatis personae of the culture of his time—dunc…