Pope's 'Epistle to urlington'
Alexander Pope's 'Epistle to urlington' (1731)

In 1730 Richard oyle, 3rd Earl of urlington (1694-1753) published a collection of drawings of a number of ancient Roman buildings made by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, which he had acquired while traveling in Italy in 1718, under the title Fabbriche Anticde disegnate da Andrea Palladio (Curl, 1993, p. 28). urlington was at this time well-known as a promoter and practitioner of the Palladian style in architecture, and was seen by many contemporaries, including his friend the poet Alexander Pope, as a leader of taste (Rogers, 1978, pp. 213-4). The following year Pope published 'An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard, Earl of urlington' which was occasioned by urlington's collection of Palladio's drawings and which dealt directly with the issues of aesthetic taste and judgment at the heart of the urlingtonian movement in architecture.

The poem is preceded by a quotation from…...

mla

Bibliography

Note: references in the essay to Pope's 'Epistle to Burlington' are to the Twickenham Edition text cited below, and are given by line number.

Aubrey, J.R. (1983). Timon's villa: Pope's composite picture. Studies in Philology, 80, 325-348.

Ayres, P. (1990). Pope's 'Epistle to Burlington': the Vitruvian analogies. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 30, 429-444.

Bateson, F.W. (Ed.). (1961). The Poems of Alexander Pope. The Twickenham Edition. London: Methuen. (Original edition 1951)

Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope mastered satire as a primary means of poetic communication. Swift's "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" is essentially his self-written obituary. With candid self-insight, Swift admits his flaws, his jealousies, his insecurities, and his egotisms. His characteristic tongue in cheek style belies the weight of the subject matter; he knew his death was immanent and at the most basic level wanted to pen something that displayed how he hoped to be remembered. Swift's friend Alexander Pope did not copy. However, Pope's "Epistle to Arbuthnot" is the obituary of his dear friend John Arbuthnot, who also happened to be a friend of Swift's. The "Epistle to Arbuthnot" is similar in tone and style to "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift." Both poems are brash, humorous, sarcastic, and brutally honest. Although morbid in theme, the poems serve distinct literary functions. Pope and Swift mock…...

mla

References

Lancashire, I. (2009). Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Retrieved online:  http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1633.html 

Swift, J. (1739). Verses on the death of Dr. Swift. Retrieved online: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/verses.html

Man
The first Epistle of Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man" concerns life itself, with regard to the universe. According to the first lines of the poem, life is apparently meaningless. We are born, live and die. It is an eternal cycle with no change.

Yet there is the possibility of creating meaning. According to Pope, this can be done with the human faculty of reason:

Say first, of God above, or man below,

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Of man what see we, but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known,

Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe," (Epistle I; Line 17-24).

Yet man has reason to make meaning of life. Man's task is to use reason in order to understand the world and God. In this…...

Pope and Swift: Satirists of Their Day
In Swift's Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and Pope's An Epistle to Arbuthnot, the authors seem to vindicate their use of satire, while satirizing others. Alexander Pope, in his preface to An Epistle to Arbuthnot, identifies the motivation of the poem as a response to attacks on his "Person, Morals, and Family" and to give "truer information" of himself (Pope 1733). Pope warns readers that many would recognize allusions to them in it, "but I have, for the most part spar'd their Names, and they may escape being laugh'd at" (Pope 1733). In 1731, shortly before Pope wrote his Epistle, Pope's friend Jonathan Swift completed Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and published it almost a decade later in 1739. After his friend Esther Johnson died, the theme of death "became a frequent feature in Swift's life" (Wikipedia, 2012). Swift then…...

mla

Bibliography

Deutsch, Helen. (1993). The "truest copies" and the "mean original:" pope, deformity, and the poetics of self-exposure. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1. 1-26.

Fischer, J. Irwin. (1970) How to Die: Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift. The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 21, No. 84. 422-441.

Jonathan Swift. (2012, May 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:34, May 10, 2012, from  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jonathan_Swift&oldid=490658106 

Pope, Alexander. (1733). An Epistle to Arbuthnot. Ed. Jack Lynch. Retrieved May 10, 2012, from Jack Lynch's website: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/arbuthnot.html

Man as a Manifesto of Rationalism
The English Restoration of 1660 delineates a dramatic transition in British literature from writing that is elegant, expressive, and often sentimental to prose and poetry that embraces simple, lucid, classical forms (Evans 203). Additionally, the years after the Restoration saw writers continuing to investigate new regions of the scientific, the philosophical, the political, and the moral. Antecedents of this trend include seventeenth century writers such as Francis Bacon, who pondered always the "nature of truth" (Evans 199), Thomas Hobbes, a political philosopher who asserted that sovereign power is ultimately borrowed from the citizen (McKay, Bennett, and Buckler 552), and John Locke, who contended that all human notions are "derived from experience" (McKay, Bennett, and Buckler 606). Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke foreshadowed and typified the sorts of philosophical texts that would become common during the Enlightenment, works that often expressed the Rationalism of the age.…...

mla

Works Cited

Alexander Pope." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 1. Ed.

M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. 2212-2216.

Evans, Ifor. A Short History of English Literature. Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1962.

McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckler. A History of Western Civilization.

" For example, of the materialism and penchant for "conspicuous consumption" among Romans of the time, Juvenal observes:
in Rome we must toe the line of fashion, spending beyond our means, and often non-borrowed credit.

It's a universal failing: here we all live in pretentious poverty. To cut a long story short, there's a price-tag on everything in Rome. hat does it cost to greet Cossus, or extract one tight-lipped nod from Veiento the honors-broker? (180-5).

Criticizing the inflated costs of everything in Rome, Juvenal also states:

inflation swells the rent of your miserable flat, inflation hits the keep of your hungry slaves, your own humble dinner. (166-7)

Moreover, within the declining Roman society described by Juvenal's Third Satire, wealth is so revered for its own sake that, when, for instance, a rich man's house burns to the ground, his house and all his belongings will soon be replaced by better than what he had…...

mla

Works Cited

Damrosch. David et al., Eds. The Longman Anthology World Literature. Vol.

A. New York: Pearson, 2004. 1309; 1353.

Dryden, John. "Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (Abridged)."

Dryden's "Discourse on Satire" (Abridged). Ed. Jack Lynch.

Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift are two of the greatest satirists in literature because they capture elements of truth that force us to look at ourselves as a society. hile both authors reflect on political and economic conditions of the eighteenth century, their work is timeless because their topics ultimately return to humanity. Their achievements lie in the fact that they depict man in circumstances that are both thought provoking and amusing. Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" and "The Dunciad," along with Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and Gulliver's Travels demonstrate how satire takes its best form when its target is human nature.
The satirist is quite lucky in that he has many varieties of subjects when it comes to human nature M.H. Abrams observes that in most instances the satirist considers "prevalent evils and generally observable human types, not with particular individuals" (Abrams 2211). This is certainly true with Alexander…...

mla

Works Cited

Abrams, M.H. "Alexander Pope." The Norton Anthology of English Literature W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 2209-14.

Pope, Alexander. "The Rape of the Lock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 2233-52.

The Dunciad." The Norton Anthology of English Literature W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 2291-6.

Ross, John. Gulliver's Travels. Introduction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1948.

Man
The word 'man' is used throughout Pope's poem and refers to humankind as a whole, not necessarily the male species. As Pope states in the beginning of Epistle I, his intent is to "But vindicate the ways of God to man" (Pope pp). He sets out to demonstrate a Christian-based cosmogony, or rather his theory of how the universe was created (Cody pp). Pope draws on the contemporary scientific discoveries of the day, especially those of Isaac Newton (Cody pp). This first Epistle concerns the nature of man and his place within the universe, while Epistle II deals with man as an individual, his basic nature and state of being (Cody pp). Epistle III concerns man, the individual, in relation to human society as a whole, as well as to the political and social classes, and Epistle IV, concerns humankind's pursuit of happiness (Cody pp).

Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man"…...

mla

Work Cited

Pope, Alexander. "An Essay on Man." Read Book OnLine.net. pp. I:16,

  q=alexander+pope%27s+essay+on+man.http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& ;

Cody, David. "Alexander Pope's Essay on Man: An Introduction." Victorian Web.

 http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/pope/man.html

Instead, it uses mock heroic allusions and meter in the style of Pope's translation of Homeric epic to make the mores and morals of the aristocracy seem absurd. In detailing the efforts of Belinda preparing herself for a party, Pope makes her sound like she is preparing to do battle, with her attendants, little, godlike beings that are pale shadows of great Zeus and Athena:
"Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav'rite Lock;

Ariel himself shall be the Guard of Shock.

hen Belinda plays a card game with the Baron who will eventually deprive her of her hair, the trivial game is portrayed like a conquest of Troy:

The Knave of Diamonds now tries his wily Arts,

And wins (oh shameful Chance!) the Queen of Hearts.

At this, the Blood the Virgin's Cheek forsook,

A livid Paleness spreads o'er all her Look;

Unlike Johnson's satire, instead of directly telling the reader to laugh at Belinda and the absurd…...

mla

Works Cited

"Alexander Pope." Books and Writers. April 29, 2009. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apope.htm

Johnson, Samuel. The Vanity of Human Wishes. Full e-text available April 29, 2009 at  http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/johnson.html 

"Juvenalian satire." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 29 Apr.

2009 .

But even in Pope, there is an intense sense of Eloisa's self-dramatization, as she uses herself as a potent warning to others, in a way that oversteps the conventions that she is merely talking to her former lover:
hen this rebellious heart shall beat no more;

If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings

To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,

O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,

And drink the falling tears each other sheds;

Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,

"Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!"

Eloisa wishes to account for the gap between her unruly inner life and a static monastic life that she professes in order to help herself and others 'do good and avoid evil, for the love of God, requirements that entail an ongoing interior struggle with one's motives, memories and desires' (Hotz 2001:205). Hers is a morality tale in its own way, a confession and…...

mla

Works Cited

Haywood, Eliza. Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze. From Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems, by Eliza Haywood (ca.1693-1756). London: Dan Browne and S. Chapman, 1725. III, 2. (2d. Ed.)

Hicks, Stephen. "Eliza Haywood's letter technique in three early novels (1721-27)."

Papers on Language and Literature. Fall 1998.

Hotz, Mary Elizabeth. "Precious to grace: Necessary desolation in Pope's Eloisa to Abelard." Renascence. Spring 2001.

Do you disagree with any of Pope's opinions or pronouncements in the Heroic Couplets or "An Essay on Man"?

Pope is critical of individuals who "cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust," suggesting that the unhappiest people are people who blame God, rather than themselves for all of their troubles, or who curse God because their lives are imperfect. The need to accept life's imperfections while still working to enact positive changes within the limitations of humanity is a positive message still relevant for people today.

Based on what you have read of "The Rape of the Lock," what do you think the poem's theme or central message is? What or who are the objects of his satire? Does the epic, "The Rape of the Lock" apply in any way to society today? Identify two passages that could serve as satiric commentaries on people's behavior today. Your answer should discuss both the passage…...

Man" the Design and Epistles I and II
Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man" explores the complicated nature of man and attempts to bring a sense of understanding to the problems we face. The approach is philosophical, yet Pope proves his points successfully by explaining mankind's place in the universe and by also focusing on the responsibilities of mankind.

The most interesting aspect of Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man" is the way in which Pope frames the poem, which is a "peculiarly modern way of enframing the familiar which shifts from the immediacy of the given world to the mediation of a theoretical map of nature" (Cutting-Gray). It is this perspective that allows us to view man's circumstances in a refreshing way. In "The Design," Pope introduces us to his initial thoughts regarding the poem and how it came to be. He tells us, " I thought it more satisfactory to begin…...

mla

Works Cited

Abrams, M.H. "An Essay on Man." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. I. New York W.W. Norton and Company. 1986.

An Essay on Man, or, The First Book of Ethic Epistles." Gale Database. 1999. Accessed March 01, 2004.http://www.infotrac.comSite

Cutting-Gray, Joanne. "System, the divided mind, and the Essay on Man." Studies in English Literature. Vol. 32.1992.   Accessed March 01, 2004.http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=9209211096&db=aphSite 

McLaverty James. "Warburton's false comma: Reason and virtue in Pope's Essay on Man." Modern Philology. Vol. 99. 2002. ProQuest Database.  http://www.proquest.com

" The differences in these two lines seem to be only a matter of syntax but in actuality, it also differs in the meaning. The King James Bible version makes it seem like the Lord is making the individual do something, as if by force or obligation, while the Puritan version states that the Lord causes the individual to do something, as if out of their own will. This alone relays the message that faith itself is driving the action, not a perceived obligation.
Another distinction between the two translations can be found with the lines "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: / and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (King James Bible) and "Goodness and mercy surely shall / all my days follow me. / and in the Lord's house I shall / dwell so long as days shall…...

Eighteenth Century was a time of profound change and upheaval in the western world. Alexander Pope, Samuel Pepys, Jonathan Swift were among the most prominent of 18th century writers, and each left his mark on literature. Importantly, the 1800s were characterized by the impact of social stratification on all aspects of life, including food, fashion, society, furnishings, and even literature.
Society and Culture

In 18th century Europe, the dominant powers were Russia, Prussia, France, Austria, and Britain. As such, any discussion of the 18th century usually focuses upon life in these leading nations. At the time, America was embroiled deeply in the development of a new nation, the shaking off of the shackles of slavery, and lessening English control in the American colonies. The United States Declaration of Independence was only signed late in the eighteenth century, in 1776 (ikipeda).

Lasting from 1701-1800, the 18th century is often synonymous with the ideals and…...

mla

Works Cited

AllRefer. Interior decoration, Interior Design and Home Furnishings. AllRefer.com. 11 May 2004.  http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/I/interior.html 

Brainard, Rick. Daily Life: 18th Century Society: An Overview. 18th Century History. 11 May 2004. http://www.history1700s.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=105

Colonial Williamsburg. 18th Century Clothing. 11 May 2004.  http://www.history.org/history/clothing/intro/index.cfm 

Malaspina Great Books. Alexander Pope. 11 May 2004. http://www.malaspina.com/site/person_951.asp

Gulliver wants more than anything to be accepted as a Houyhnhnm, a species he believes is perfect. Swift reveals irony through the fragility of the human condition. Gulliver is heavily influenced by the Houyhnhnms and he begins to admire them far too much. In fact, it is safe to say that he idolized them. Their opinions "opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light" (250). He worships them and slowly begins to despise anything that is not of the Houyhnhnms, including his very own kind. Gulliver wants to fit into the Houyhnhnm circle and simply forget everything else. The Yahoos are the "most unteachable of all brutes" (227). To say such a thing not only insults others but also insults oneself but Gulliver is so drunk with adoration, he cannot think straight. He believes…...

mla

Works Cited

Pope, Alexander. "The Rape of the Lock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York W.W. Norton and Company. 1986.

Swift, Jonathon. Gulliver's Travels. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1948.