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IAD: A Progeny of the Dunciad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Richmond P. Bond
Richmond P. Bond*
Affiliation:
The University of North Carolina
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Extract

Fashions in literature run not only to theme, form, influence, and diction but also to title and even part of a title. For a century following the Dunciad an extraordinary number of productions had titles ending in -iad (-ead, -ad, -ade). The presence of this suffix denoted that the work dealt with the subject suggested by the name to which those final letters were affixed. The NED gives the English suffix -ad as representing the Greek -άδ-α, forming feminine patronymics and hence used in names of poems. The mere -ad did not often appear but yielded to the more euphonious -iad and sometimes -ead; the -ade was the French spelling.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1099 - 1105
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 1099 Cf. Δηλιάδα, Aristotle, Poetics ii, 5.

Note 2 in page 1099 The usual place of publication was naturally London. I have used an asterisk to note items published in America, which are of course in the regular current. My list of these productions in two centuries, English and American, contains more than 240 titles, about fifty of which seem to have disappeared; at least they are not to be found in the British Museum, the Bodleian, or the Harvard College Library.

Note 3 in page 1099 See Raymond Toinet, Quelques recherches autour des poèmes héroïques-épiques français du dix-septième siècle, Tulle, 1899-1907, 2 vols., passim.

Note 4 in page 1100 In Drayton's Odes “A Skeltoniad” is in thirty-six lines of Skeltonic metre. For different kinds of title-endings compare Drayton's Mortimeriados, 1596, Cowley's Davideis, 1656, Edward Howard's Caroloides, 1689, John Lacy's Steeleids, 1714, Glover's Athenaid, 1787.

Note 5 in page 1100 Hugh Walker, English Satire and Satirist, 1925, p. 222, says of Pope's influence, “the very titles of a multitude of mock-heroics attest the wide-spread influence of The Dunciad.” Some -iads can be noted in Walter Hamilton, Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors, Vol. I, 1884; R. W. Lowe, Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature, 1888; R. D. Havens, Influence of Milton on English Poetry, 1922; J. M. Beatty, “Churchill's Influence on Minor Eighteenth Century Satirists,” PMLA, XLII (1927), 162-76; “Dunciad Epics,” Notes on Sales, T. L. S., Aug. 30, 1923, p. 576.

Note 6 in page 1100 Voltaire's La ligue was published in London in 1728 as the Henriade, which perhaps influenced Pope's selection of a title. For Pope's change in proposed title see his letter to Swift, Elwin-Courthope edition, VII, 110, and R. H. Griffith, “The Dunciad of 1728,” Mod. Phil. XIII (1915), 5.

Note 7 in page 1101 Other early critical notes may be found in the Dulcinead, 1729, Martiniad, 1729, Tamiad, 1733, Causticks Applied to the Causidicade, 1743, Dodd's New Book of the Dunciad, Smart's Hilliad, Wilkie's Epigoniad. There is an amusing passage on the vogue in the Britoniad, 1780, p. 21, beginning “The title has a classic termination.”

Note 8 in page 1102 The Quack-Iliad, 1761, was also satirical of the elder Pitt.

Note 9 in page 1102 The Nowiad, 1755, satirized Garrick, who wrote the Fribbleriad against Fitzpatrick in 1761.

Note 10 in page 1102 London seemed to be the most fruitful Parnassus of this commercial Muse, for annual versions appeared during two decades. After the Twentieth the mere arithmetic of the thing palled a bit: we find the One Hundredth in 1877, the New Hundredth two years later, and the Third Hundredth Londoniad yet two years later.

Note 11 in page 1103 Avowedly written before the more famous Rolliad, which was the model and butt for the New Rolliad, 1785. George Colman the younger wrote a Rodiad on birching.

Note 12 in page 1104 A Rosciad of 1750 and the Ancient Rosciad of 1753 preceded Churchill's. Successors were T. Morell's Anti-R., 1761, H. J. Pye's (?) R. of C-v-nt G-rd-n, 1762, the Smithfield R., 1763, Hibernian R., 1765, Rational R., 1767, New R. for the Year MDCCLXX, Edinburgh R. for 1775, J. H. Leigh's New R., 1785, More Kotzebue . . . . Minor R., 1799, George Butler's R., 1802, Young R., 1805, on the actor Betty, W. H. Logan's Edinburgh R.; for the Summer Season 1834, Mundus Dramaticus (The New R.), 1852. W. P. Russel's Prose-R. appeared in 1804. The Theatrical Register; or, Weekly R. was a column of dramatic notes in the London Chronicle, 1766, and the Theatrical Repository; or, Weekly R. was a weekly periodical, 1801-02. The Churchiliad was a prose reply to Churchill in 1761.

Note 13 in page 1104 I have not included translations of the popular epics by Vida, Camoens, and Voltaire, the Christiad, the Lusiad, and the Henriade.

Note 14 in page 1105 The first installment appeared Feb. 9, 1928.

The Billiad (not to be confused of course with the Biliad, a satire on literary criticism, which Trollope quoted in his Autobiography) and the Hodgiad are Mr. Hewlett's creations in his Bendish; the former is referred to in Mr. Cabell's Beyond Life.

It should be said that each of the contemporary -iads suggests a former age.