Tag Archives: Dunciad

Rightwing Educators & Pope’s Dunces

Rightwing parent groups and legislators want authoritarian teachers who teach their truth. They want Bentley from Pope’s “Dunciad.”

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Does Lightweight Lit Do Damage?

I look at how thinkers over the centuries have viewed so-called popular or lightweight literature.

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Despite Trump, the Rivers Kept Speaking

Jane Hirshfield’s “Fifth Day,” written five days into the Trump administration, capture the president’s war against science and the environment.

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Read to Resist: An Introduction

Thursday I share today the introduction to my upcoming book, which is still in draft form and whose title I keep changing. Latest title: Read to Resist: Classic Lit Provides Tools for Battling Trump and Trumpism. I’m still not entirely satisfied with that and so will keep tinkering. In any event, here’s my first attempt […]

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National Inquirer, Political Sewage

“National Inquirer” is in trouble for having conspired to bury article critical of Donald Trump. Alexander Pope described such publications in “The Dunciad.”

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Crude Caricatures Are Not Effective Satire

Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee gave their fans a quick high with their foul language, but such language does little substantive.

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Pope Describes Triumph of Stupidity

Book IV of Pope’s “Dunciad” captures the triumph of Trumpism. In Pope’s poem, the goddess dullness (stupidity) has conquered the world.

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The Right Wing’s War on Science

Tim O’Brien describes a character for whom facts are formed by sensation. Sounds like today’s right wing.

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The End of the World As We Know It?

A number of poets have written poems about the apocalypse. But it’s always figurative, never literal.

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