Alexander Pope’s Poem ‘An Essay On Criticism’ Offe

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“Alexander Pope’s poem ‘An Essay On Criticism’ offers a master-class not only in writing poetry but in being a literary critic.” Discuss. In the world of seventeenth century poetry, no poet exists in isolation. Not simply by being part of a club, such as Pope’s membership of the Scriblerus Club, but as being members of a particular class, a particular religion or a particular political outlook. Born into a Catholic family at a time when being Catholic meant being denied educational and political opportunities, may not have significantly influenced Pope worldview, but neither can such a fact be completely ignored. In this essay I shall argue that An Essay on Criticism is not a straight-forward treatise of writing poetry or indeed criticism, but rather a strong political and religious polemic. In a time of societal and political flux the intelligentsias of an age are often heavily influenced by the events which surround them. With the beginnings, albeit faltering beginnings of the industrial age, with many swapping traditional rural lifestyles to more urban settings, not least due to the ‘enclosure’ laws (a prohibition for rural dwellers from use of common acreage fodder (1), and the ever growing demand for workers in cities, coupled with new religious philosophies emerging from Europe from Luther and Calvin, in turn affecting political philosophies, the poets of the day could not remain immune to this change of landscape. That self same ‘landscape’ lay at the heart of early seventeenth century poets concerns expressed in poetry referred to a ‘pastorals’. But the approach to these poems, which attempted to define the new landscape and man’s role in it, could not have been more different. Two distinct factions emerged, one led by Ambrose Philip, the other by Alexander Pope. The former an adherent of the view of man as an individual, the latter, of the view that
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