ABSTRACT
Pope’s Dunciad is based, is ‘Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night’ (I.12), echoing Milton’s Paradise Lost, which states that between hell and earth ‘eldest Night / And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold / Eternal anarchy’ (Fowler 1998: II.894-6). ‘Night’ in this sense is an aspect of Chaos (‘sable-vested Night, eldest of things, / The consort of his reign’: II.962-3), not the night which God later creates as opposite of day (‘light the day, and darkness night / He named’: VII.251-2).
