Why did Alexander Pope use mock footnotes and appendices in The Dunciad Variorum?

Alexander Pope included elaborate mock footnotes, appendices, prefaces, indexes, and errata in The Dunciad Variorum (1729) to serve as a burlesque of pedantry. By surrounding his poem with this heavy-handed critical apparatus, Pope whimsically suggested that The Dunciad had fallen into the hands of an "artless pedant"—a dunce—thereby satirizing the very type of scholarly excess he despised.12

This stylistic choice allowed Pope to extend his satire beyond the poem itself, effectively mocking the pretentious and overly literal-minded literary criticism of his era. By presenting the work as if it had been edited by one of his targets, he reinforced his critique of the "reign of pedantry" that he believed was threatening the standards of civilized society.12