Pope’s double mistress : Oriental philosophy and the Scriblerian dialectic

My dissertation, “Pope’s Double Mistress: Oriental Philosophy and the Scriblerian Dialectic,” addresses the aesthetic form and literary history of an eighteenth-century genre known as Scriblerian satire. The study recovers a hitherto unacknowledged technique of Orientalist imitation crafted by Alexander Pope and featured in the “Double Mistress” episode in The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (1741). By uncovering Pope’s esoteric Scriblerian design, we gain a clearer understanding of his archive and reception into the literary canon. My study documents the surprising impact of Pope’s Scriblerian Orientalism on British literary history, tracing its influence over a series of controversies surrounding the posthumous suppressions and revelations of his Double Mistress episode.