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In Our Time
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The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
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BIOGRAPHY
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| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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THE SCRIBLERUS CLUB
Use our research page to find out more about this subject.
The 18th century Scriblerus Club included some of the most extraordinary and vivid satirists ever to have written in the English language. We are given giants and midgets, implausible unions with Siamese twins, diving competitions into the open sewer of Fleet-ditch, and Olympic-style pissing competitions: "Who best can send on high/The salient spout, far streaming to the sky". But these exotic images were part of an attempt by Pope, Swift and their cadres to show a world in terrible decline:
"Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! Thy dread empire, Chaos! Is restored:
Light dies before thy uncreating word".
So wrote Alexander Pope in his great mock epic verse, The Dunciad.
Who were the Scriblerans? And what in eighteenth century society had driven them to such disdain and despair?
Contributors
John Mullan, Senior Lecturer in English at University College London
Judith Hawley, Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London
Marcus Walsh, Kenneth Allott Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool
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