The scriblerus club

Scriblerus was a fictitious author's name  first materialized in 1713 as a fictional scholar created by a group of intellectuals who were some of the great cultural figures of the eighteenth century: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, and Thomas Parnell. These men collaborated on producing literature that attacked the excessively literal approaches of their time to academic pursuits, ranging from medicine to philosophy (Baines, Alexander Pope, 16-17); they believed that ridiculing the literary approaches in terms of academic pursuits prevalent in their time.

1. THE SCRIBLERUS CLUB

2. Members and the club The  Scriblerus Club  was an informal gathering of authors, based in London, coming together as a group in the early 18th century. They were prominent figures in the Augustan Age of English letters. The nucleus of the club included the satirists Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Other members were John Gay, John Arbuthnot,  Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell. The group was founded in 1714 and lasted until the death of the founders, finally ending in 1745. Pope and Swift are the two members whose reputations and work have made the most long-lasting influence. The group collaborated upon creating the persona of  Martinus Scriblerus through whose writings they accomplished their satirical aims.

3. John Gay, John Arbuthnot and Thomas Parnell

4. Very little of the material published by the group had been published until the 1740s. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer occasionally joined the club for meetings, though he is not known to have contributed to their literary output. The club was started with an intent to mainly satirize the abuses of learning wherever they might be found, which led to The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus . The second edition of Pope's  The Dunciad also contains work attributed to Martinus Scriblerus . Richard Owen Cambridge wrote a mock epic poem , the Scribleriad , where the hero is Martinus Scriblerus . Henry Fielding’s play,  The Welsh Opera is presented as a tribute to the " Scriblerians ". Fielding's pen name was " Scriblerus Secundus ."

5. Richard Owen Cambridge The major work by Cambridge was the  Scribleriad  (1751 ). It is a mock epic poem , in which the hero is the  Martinus Scriblerus of Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and  Jonathan Swift. The poem is preceded by a dissertation on the mock heroic, in which he avows  Cervantes as his master. It is full of literary in-jokes. Horace Walpole in his letters makes many humorous allusions to Cambridge in the character of newsmonger

6. Scriblerus  first materialized in 1713 as a fictional scholar created by a group of intellectuals who were the Tory-affiliated members of the Scriblerus Club. They satirized contemporary methods of education and learning they deemed too mechanical (Vander Muelen , Pope's Dunciad , 11). The club comprised of some of the greatest literary figures of the eighteenth century: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, and Thomas Parnell. These men collaborated on producing literature that attacked the excessively literal approaches of their time to academic pursuits, ranging from medicine to philosophy (Baines,  Alexander Pope , 16-17); they believed that ridiculing these arguments provided the best means for disarming them of their influence. They conceived of Martinus Scriblerus as a pedantic scholar who devoted himself to fact-checking and trivial details rather than to humanistic matters (Baines, 31 )…. contd .

7. The group broke up unexpectedly after the death of Queen Anne in 1714, signifying the Tories' loss of political power. Nevertheless, the men continued to work together to produce texts such as  The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (written mostly by Arbuthnot but published in a volume of Pope's works in 1741) and Pope's  Dunciad Variorum  (the 1729 follow-up to his Dunciad ). Both of these works incorporate Martinus Scriblerus ;  Memoirs  tells the story of his upbringing and education (Haslett,  Pope to Burney , 36) whereas Variorum includes his typically fastidious notes, written by Pope himself (Baines, 31 ). Contd …

8. In "Signs of the Times ,“ Carlyle alludes to Martinus Scriblerus wherein he makes the connection between the mechanical knowledge of doctors and the completely material (as opposed to spiritual) composition of the wood-and-leather man. According to Carlyle, what he describes as "scientific stoicism" allows for the reduced emphasis on metaphysical concepts, leading to a belief in a soul and morality that lies outside of the self rather than within (Spalding, "Theories," 13). Carlyle evokes the satire of the Scriblerus Club in an attempt to draw their eighteenth-century social criticism into the nineteenth century, proving that these fallacies of thinking require derision and assault rather than acceptance or inaction.

9. REFERENCES Baines , Paul.  The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope . London: Routledge , 2000. Haslett , Moyra .  Pope to Burney, 1714-1779: Scriblerians to Bluestockings . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. " Scriblerus Club."  Encyclopædia Britannica . 2009.  Encyclopædia Britannica Online . 29 Mar 2009. " Scriblerus Club."  Wikipedia . 2009. 29 March 2009. Spalding , J.L. "Theories of Education and Life." T he American Catholic Quarterly Review  IV (1879): 13. Vander Muelen , David L.  Pope's Dunciad of 1728: A History and Facsimile . Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1991 . Martinus Scriblerus " — an annotation to Thomas Carlyle's "Signs of the Times" Caitlin Trujillo '12, English 60J, Brown University, 2009 www.victorianweb.com