The Triumph of Augustan Poetics offers an important and original reevaluation of the transition from Baroque to Augustan in English literature. Starting with Butler's outrageous burlesque, Hudibras, Blanford Parker describes the origins of Augustan satire and its momentous departure from the religious and social writing of an earlier era. He goes on to explain the creation, from the ruins of satire, of a new poetry of nature and everyday life (emerging most significantly in the work of Pope and Thomson), and the ambiguous or hostile responses of writers including Samuel Johnson.

The Triumph of Augustan Poetics offers an important and original reevaluation of the transition from Baroque to Augustan in English literature. Starting with Butler's outrageous burlesque, Hudibras, Blanford Parker describes the origins of Augustan satire and its momentous departure from the religious and social writing of an earlier era. He goes on to explain the creation, from the ruins of satire, of a new poetry of nature and everyday life (emerging most significantly in the work of Pope and Thomson), and the ambiguous or hostile responses of writers including Samuel Johnson.