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press are all signs of the triumph of
Dulness over reason and light. Each of these things represents choosing the less thoughtful over the more rational choice, each requires credulity and acceptance over curiosity and independence, and therefore Pope blames, at least as much as any agent of Dulness,
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he asks only that she pause a moment to let him write his poem before she takes "the singer and the song" into her oblivion. She is not motivated by any particular malice, and she even shows mercy at one point, if being reduced to insensibility is mercy, for, when a deflowered nun comes before her,
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she drops her cloak of shamelessness over the ruined woman. Instead, she has an essential antipathy toward learning and independent thinking, and, for Pope, loss of the ability to discern, to think, and to appreciate is a living death and the license of all evil.
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230:"The Dunciad: Book the First"
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256:Study Guide: The Dunciad
252:"The Dunciad Characters"
282:The Grub Street Project
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308:Fictional goddesses
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181:Dunciad B
174:Dunciad B
166:Dunciad A
55:"Dulness"
258:. eNotes
201:flattery
96:May 2014
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123:goddess
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