A Study in English Satire, 1660-1750

FAIN: FA-51832-05

Michael Felix Suarez
University of Virginia (Bronx, NY 10458-9993)

I plan to complete the first book-length study of the mock biblical, a dynamic and pervasive mode of verbal and visual political satire in Restoration and C18 England. Augmenting my earlier work by analyzing satires that marshal scriptural quotations, typologies, or tropes in texts by Dryden, Defoe, Swift, Pope, & Fielding, I shall further demonstrate the extent to which the mock biblical was an essential weapon in the polemicist's armory. By charting the efflorescence of the mock biblical, I hope to enlarge our understanding of satirical practices, illuminate the life of the Bible in the period, and demonstrate the extent to which the language of politics was closely allied to religious discourse in the Restoration and eighteenth century.