The Scriblerus Club was an informal association of writers and satirists which included Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell, Alexander Pope, John Gay and the politician Robert Harley. Its object was to parody false science and scholarship through the figure of an educated fool, the fictional literary hack Martinus Scriblerus, but it appears to have met regularly only from January to July 1714. The name Martin was adopted from Sir Martin Mar-all, a character created by the dramatist John Dryden, which had become synonymous with the absurd; scribler, was a term of contempt used to describe a writer with no talent.[1][2]
Members of the club wrote mocking caricatures with risible giants and midgets, diving competitions into the open sewer of Fleet-ditch, and Olympic-style pissing competitions.[3] A number of the short satires attributed to Martinus Scriblerus were printed or reprinted in miscellanies by Pope and Swift from 1727, and works such as Gulliver’s Travels, Peri Bathous, and The Dunciad were in part inspired by the original idea.[1]
The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus appeared in 1741.[1] By then, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift were the only surviving members of the group.[2]
References
Works cited
External links
- “The Scriblerus Club“, episode of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time
