Pope printed his Imitations of Horace alongside the original Horatian poems on which they were based, and to understand these works fully it is necessary to compare in detail each Imitation with its original. This is the first book to do so. Through a close analysis of each Horatian poem (translated anew, for the many readers of Pope who do not know Latin), Mr Stack explores the complex and subtle intertextual relationship between Pope's Imitations and their originals. An important feature of the book is the detailed comparison with other eighteenth-century views of Horace. Two chapters on the interpretation of Horace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries highlight the power and originality of Pope's treatment. By drawing upon a wide range of twentieth-century criticism of Horace, Mr Stack shows that Pope's Imitations are still challenging and can make us look afresh at Horace's poems. The thrust of the book is to emphasize the radical nature of Pope's interpretation of Horace, an engagement which is both dynamic and changing. Pope responds to the most significant aspects of Horace - the treatment of human inconsistency, the explorations of the nature of the self, the movement between scepticism and idealism - and re-explores these themes in his own poetry. In their profound debt to Horace, and in their attempt to become vigorously independent from him, these Imitations stand as one of the most remarkable examples of intertextuality in English literature.

Pope printed his Imitations of Horace alongside the original Horatian poems on which they were based, and to understand these works fully it is necessary to compare in detail each Imitation with its original. This is the first book to do so. Through a close analysis of each Horatian poem (translated anew, for the many readers of Pope who do not know Latin), Mr Stack explores the complex and subtle intertextual relationship between Pope's Imitations and their originals. An important feature of the book is the detailed comparison with other eighteenth-century views of Horace. Two chapters on the interpretation of Horace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries highlight the power and originality of Pope's treatment. By drawing upon a wide range of twentieth-century criticism of Horace, Mr Stack shows that Pope's Imitations are still challenging and can make us look afresh at Horace's poems. The thrust of the book is to emphasize the radical nature of Pope's interpretation of Horace, an engagement which is both dynamic and changing. Pope responds to the most significant aspects of Horace - the treatment of human inconsistency, the explorations of the nature of the self, the movement between scepticism and idealism - and re-explores these themes in his own poetry. In their profound debt to Horace, and in their attempt to become vigorously independent from him, these Imitations stand as one of the most remarkable examples of intertextuality in English literature.

Cult cartoonist Frank Stack is best known as the artist behind Harvey Pekar s award-winning graphic novel, My Cancer Year (his art was featured in the American Splendor film), and as the creator of the first underground comic book, The Adventures of Jesus. Foolbert Funnies collects comics inspired by Stack s pop culture-filled childhood and travails as a fine arts professor that ran in National Lampoon and other publications. (For decades, Stack s work was published under the pseudonym Foolbert Sturgeon to protect his career.) In Foolbert Funnies, you will find adventuress Dirty Diana; nostalgic time traveler Frank Crankcase; commonsensical Dr. Feelgood; politician Paddy Booshwah; Southern Fried Homicide; and a host of Amazons, artists, and pulp heroes, all depicted in Stack s scratchy, hatchy crowquill style. This best of the rest is a tribute to a Texan who s been quietly creating observational, iconoclastic art for more than forty years."