Other literary forms
Apart from original poetry, Alexander Pope’s works include an edition of William Shakespeare, a translation (1715-1720) of Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.) and (1725-1726) Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.), an edition of his personal correspondence, and a prose satire titled Peri Bathos: Or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727). Pope’s edition of Shakespeare is chiefly of interest for the response that it brought from Lewis Theobald, a rival editor of Shakespeare’s plays. Although not always unjust in his criticisms, Theobald did overlook some of the genuine excellences of Pope’s edition, especially Pope’s penetrating introduction. (It must be admitted, however, that even this is vitiated at times by Pope’s inability to appreciate Shakespeare’s so-called deviations from the eighteenth century notion of “correctness.”) The translations from Homer are not strictly literal, but are rather adaptations of Homer’s genius to the conventions and expectations of Augustan sensibility. Still, they are regarded as the most readable and eloquent versions of Homer to come out of the eighteenth century, notwithstanding the numerous instances of periphrasis (the substitution of a phrase such as “finny prey” for “fish”) that belie the vigor of the original.
Pope’s edition of his own letters is among the most notorious of his publications. By allowing several of his letters to be published without his apparent permission, Pope was able to bring out an ostensibly “correct” version of his private correspondence, the chief purpose of which was to present him in a favorable light to posterity. Understandably, the letters are rather too self-conscious and artificial for modern tastes.
Peri Bathos is a hilarious instructional booklet detailing all the elements that are necessary to produce poetry that is vulgar, tautological, florid, and inane. One other composition of Pope surely deserves mention: an essay contributed to The Guardian on the aesthetics of gardening. Pope had a decisive influence on the development of eighteenth century taste in gardens. In opposition to the rigid formalities that characterized the landscaping of the period, Pope held that gardens should be arranged in a more natural manner.
Achievements
Alexander Pope’s position in the history of English poetry has been, at times, a subject of acrimonious debate. In his own day, Pope’s achievement was frequently obfuscated by the numerous political controversies that surrounded his name. Although he finally emerged, in the estimation of the eighteenth century, as the greatest English poet since John Milton, his reputation soon reached its lowest ebb, during the Romantic and Victorian periods; he was derided by Thomas De Quincey as an author of “moldy commonplaces” and demoted by Matthew Arnold to the position of being a “classic of [English] prose.” Even in Edith Sitwell’s generally favorable study (1930), Pope is appreciated for achieving, in certain poems, a richness of imagery “almost” as lush as that of John Keats. In short, it was not until recently that the balance was redressed. Pope is now recognized as one of the consummate craftspeople of the English language.
Responding to and expressing the fundamental aesthetic tenets of the Augustan Age, Pope cannot be fully appreciated or understood without some awareness of the neoclassical assumptions that undergird his compositions. Pope’s audience was more homogeneous than Shakespeare’s and less enthusiastic (in Samuel Johnson’s meaning of that term) than Milton’s. As a result, he eschews the dramatic intensity and colloquial richness of the former and bypasses the mythopoeic passion and religious afflatus of the latter. (It must be remembered, however, that the Miltonic allusions in, say, The Rape of the Lock are not intended to derogate Milton, but to expose, by sheer...
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force of contrast, the small-mindedness of eighteenth century society.)
Sophisticated allusion, verbal brilliance, the promulgation of moral and aesthetic standards—these are the components of Pope’s poetic art. The audience for which Pope wrote was small, urban, and keenly intelligent, capable of appreciating a high degree of technical virtuosity in its poets. These poets were not expected to indulge in lyrical effusions on the subject of their private griefs or to thrust forward their own personal speculations on the end and aim of human existence. On the contrary, their purpose was to crystallize in language conspicuous for its clarity, balance, and poise, the cultural standards, aesthetic ideals, and moral certitudes that they could presume to hold in common with a sensitive and educated audience. As Pope’s career progressed, these ideals seemed increasingly remote from the political and literary arenas where he was forced to contend; hence, his later poetry—especially The Dunciad—reveals a growing rift between Pope and his public. On the whole, however, Pope’s is a public voice which distills in witty and unforgettable couplets the values of self-control, civic virtue, uncorrupted taste, critical intelligence, and spiritual humility.
As a youth, Pope was exhorted by William Walsh, a former member of John Dryden’s literary circle, to pursue “correctness” in his compositions. Pope’s career as a poet witnesses to the assiduity with which he acted on Walsh’s advice. No poet has brought to the rhyming couplet an equivalent degree of perfection or given to the form, distinguished by its technical difficulty, a greater suppleness and elasticity in the expression of various moods and situations. From the farcical brilliance of The Rape of the Lock and the passionate intensities of Eloisa to Abelard to the dignified discursiveness of An Essay on Man and the nervous energy of The Dunciad, Pope attains a perfect balance between thought and expression, between verbal wit and the felt rendering of experience.
Discussion Topics
What does Alexander Pope do in his rhymed couplets to make them so often outstanding?
In An Essay on Criticism Pope defines “true wit” as “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” Is this a shallow definition?
Discuss the effects of using a word like “rape” to describe a silly act in the poem The Rape of the Lock.
Early in An Essay on Man Pope claims to “vindicate the ways of God to man,” paraphrasing John Milton’s “justify the ways of God to man” early in Paradise Lost (1667, 1674). How do you account for the enormous differences between the two works?
To what extent would Pope have to alter The Dunciad to make it apply to society today?