Parody’s paradox: ‘Dover Beach’ versus ‘The Dover Bitch’

This article tests the notion that a literary critic might judge one poem to be demonstrably better than another. It does so by staging a contest between Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ and Anthony Hecht’s parody ‘The Dover Bitch’. Pitting Arnold versus Hecht raises several questions: how subjective, or prescriptive, can a critic be in defining standards for poetry? What values necessarily factor into a reader’s aesthetic criteria, and how do these values work with, or against, the formal, thematic, and ethical freedoms poets require? Can a parody ever outshine the original? By closely comparing the details of each poem, the article ultimately demonstrates parody’s desire to become what it mocks while also arguing for the importance of evaluation to literary studies. The article concludes by declaring who did Dover best—suggesting what ‘best’ might mean in the context of these two particular poems. This article arises from a British Academy Lecture delivered on 21 March 2024.