How did The Dunciad criticize pedantry and bad writing?

Alexander Pope used his mock-heroic masterpiece, The Dunciad, to satirize the rise of pedantry and poor literary standards in 18th-century England.12

Pope criticized these trends through several innovative techniques:

• Mock-Heroic Satire: By casting figures like Lewis Theobald and later Colley Cibber as the "favourite son" of the Goddess of Dullness, Pope elevated mediocre writers to the status of epic heroes, highlighting the absurdity of their influence.12
• Burlesque Apparatus: In The Dunciad Variorum (1729), Pope included elaborate, false footnotes, prefaces, indexes, and errata. This "critical apparatus" served as a brilliant parody of pedantic scholarship, whimsically suggesting that the poem itself had been edited by an "artless pedant".12
• Preservation of Targets: Pope famously "preserved" his critics and those he deemed "dunces" like flies in amber, using his wit and facility with iambic pentameter to ensure their intellectual failings were immortalized.12

Ultimately, the poem served as a defense of civilized standards against the perceived "reign of dullness" and the intellectual decay Pope associated with his literary rivals.12