SOURCE: Wright, Julia M. “Peacock's Early Parody of Thomas Moore in Nightmare Abbey.” English Language Notes 30, no. 4 (June 1993): pp. 31-38.

In the following essay, Wright maintains that English author Thomas Love Peacock's character of Larynx, who appears in Peacock's satirical novel Nightmare Abbey (1818), constitutes a parody of Moore, poking fun at the poet's ingratiating personality, his fondness for pseudonyms, and his weakness for alcohol.

In the 1820's and 1830's, Thomas Love Peacock launched a series of written attacks against Thomas Moore, parodying his anacreontic lyrics, ridiculing his scholarship, and denouncing his scruples. Peacock, however, knew of Moore long before this. In the letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley in which he announces the completion of Nightmare Abbey (1818), Peacock notes that he has sent Shelley a box of books which includes, he writes, “the little work of Moore which I mentioned to you, the Fudge Family in Paris.”¹ In Nightmare...