Satire in The Dunciad Book IV

 The Dunciad is a mock-heroic narrative poem. First of all, the poem is a narrative one because the speaker uses the poem to tell a story. Generally, narrative poems are long and complex, containing many characters. The poem is also a mock-heroic poem because it is a satire. It is called "heroic" because it takes the way the hero was presented in many heroic poems and exaggerates certain features to the point where the hero is no longer the hero but rather a fool.

  Book IV was entirely new to the Dunciad B and had been published first as a stand-alone concluding poem. Pope himself referred to the four-book version "the Greater Dunciad", in keeping with the Greater Iliad. It is also "greater" in that its subject is larger. Book IV can function as a separate piece or as the conclusion of the Dunciad: in many ways its structure and tone are substantially different from the first three books, and it is much more allegorical.

  The fourth book promises to show the obliteration of sense from England. The Dog-star shines, the lunatic prophets speak, and the daughter of Chaos and Nox (Dulness) rises to "dull and venal a new World to mold" (B IV 15^[46]) and begin a Saturnian age of lead.

  Dulness takes her throne, and Pope describes the allegorical tableau of her throne room. Science is chained beneath her foot-stool. Logic is gagged and bound. Wit has been exiled from her kingdom entirely. Rhetoric is stripped on the ground and tied by sophism. Morality is dressed in a gown that is bound by two cords, of furs (the ermines of judges) and lawn (the fabric of bishops sleeves), and at a nod from Dulness, her "page" (a notorious hanging judge named Page who had had over one hundred people executed) pulls both cords tight and strangles her.

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The French governor attempts to speak to Dulness but cannot be heard over the French horn sound that emerges, so the pupil tells his story. The "governor" is an English nobleman who went to school and college without learning anythingAt the end of his travels, he is "[...] perfectly well-bred,/ With nothing but a Solo in his head" (B IV 323–324^[57]), and he has returned to England with a despoiled nun following him. She is pregnant with his child (or the student's) and destined for the life of a prostitute (a kept woman), and the lord is going to run for Parliament so that he can avoid arrest.All these elements make Book IV a perfect satire.