Evaluative Analysis

 

This is a poem by Alexander Pope called The Dunciad: Book Ii, which was first published anonymously in 1728, and was published in four parts, but was eventually revealed to have been written by Alexander Pope. The point of this poem was to ridicule contemporary culture, and to show off and make fun of the great amount of mediocre authors. This work relates to Eliza Haywood because she was one of the authors targeted by this poem written by Pope, publicly calling her out through this poem. This shows off the points that were made in the previous essays, where I explained how Eliza Haywood had been constantly under the public eye, and was often called out by other authors and poets for her works. I believe this in part to be due to the fact that she would write, such as in Fantomina, about situations that were generally frowned upon by the public, and these other authors, before turning to more moral writings, which is what caused Pope to call her out for. He depicted her with “Two babes of love close clinging at her waist”, implying that she had two bastards. All of this was meant to tarnish Haywood’s reputation, and goes to show how controversial she was.

This poem is a work by Richard Savage, another poet of the time, and was published in 1725. This poem was made as a satire, and in this poem we can see Savage calling out Haywood as well as other authors. In the poem, Savage calls Haywood a “Cast-off Dame”, who is “Panting” for fame. These remarks are clearly used as defamatory remarks to try to sway the public's opinion of Haywood, as this open criticism shines a bad light on Haywood. This work as well goes to show the amount of criticism and hate that Haywood would find herself under throughout her time as an author, and how the public perception of her was molded by these authors, and the heavy criticism that she received due to her abnormal lifestyle and writing.