1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Harry M. Solomon (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: “Trivializing An Essay on Man,” in The Rape of the Text: Reading and Misreading Pope's Essay on Man, University of Alabama Press, 1993, pp. 6-31.

[In the following essay, Solomon details the historical development of the critical consensus that now regards An Essay on Man as a fundamentally flawed work.]

If the question were asked, What ought to have been the best of Pope's poems?” Thomas De Quincey wrote, “most people would answer, the Essay on Man. If the question were asked, What is the worst? all people of judgement would say, the Essay on Man.”¹ Ours must be an age of judgment, for the current consensus is indisputable: An Essay on Man is fundamentally flawed. The textbook of eighteenth-century British literature most frequently used in American universities concludes: “To write sustainedly on Man in prose … calls for powers that...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Douglas H. White (essay date 1970)
   2. I. R. F. Gordon (essay date 1976)
   3. Laura Brown (essay date 1985)
   4. G. Douglas Atkins (essay date 1986)
   5. Rebecca Ferguson (essay date 1986)
   6. Howard Erskine-Hill (essay date 1988)
   7. Harry M. Solomon (essay date 1993)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright

Related Topics