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09087_Field_TCGG T852.txt
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debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians.’ (116)
And Pope in making Dulness the goddess of the unconscious is
contrasting her with Minerva, goddess of alert intellect and wit.
It is not Minerva but her obverse complement, the owl, that the
printed book has conferred on Western man. “However ill-fitting
their heroic garb,” Williams remarks (p. 59), “one at last finds
the dunces invested with uncivilizing powers of epic
proportions.”
Supported by the Gutenberg technology, the power of the
dunces to shape and befog the human intellect is unlimited.
Pope’s efforts to clarify this basic point have been in vain. His
intense concern with the pattern of action in his armed horde
of nobodies has been mistaken for personal spite. Pope was
entirely concerned with the formalistic pattern and penetrative