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Alexander PopeAn Essay on Criticism
Nonfiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1711A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was an English poet, satirist, and critic. He was renowned in his own age and is of significance both for his contribution to poetry and satire and for his innovative translations of classical (Greek and Roman) literature. He was also Catholic at a time in Great Britain when those who were Catholic were disenfranchised and could not own land or hold public office. In addition, physical illness in the form of Pott’s disease (tuberculosis of the spine) troubled him all of his life and is often a theme in his work.
Pope’s work, including his An Essay on Criticism, is important to an understanding of English poetry in general and the early 18th century in particular. Many lines from his poems are quoted in popular literature and film and are sometimes misattributed to Shakespeare. Pope’s best-known works include The Rape of the Lock (1714), Eloisa to Abelard (1717), The Dunciad (1728), his translations of the Iliad (1715-20) and the Odyssey (1725-26), and An Essay on Man (1733-34). Pope was also a significant correspondent; he developed networks of friends and also made enemies of former friends (the most famous of whom is probably Lady Mary Wortley Montagu). An Essay on Criticism was praised by Whig writer Joseph Addison in his essay periodical The Spectator, and Pope maintained a relationship with Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, and other members of the self-named “Scriblerus Club,” which met at a coffee house in London to critique literature. As Helen Deutsch notes, Pope was “the first self-supporting, non-playwriting professional author,” and he relied on these networks of friendship with aristocratic and other celebrity writers in order to succeed (Deutsch, Helen. “Pope, Self, and World.” The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope, edited by Pat Rogers, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 14). This may explain some of his frustration, expressed in An Essay on Criticism, with critics and writers who lack skill but enjoy success due to their wealth and social standing.
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 BCE) was a Roman poet who is famous for his Satires, Epistles, Epodes, and Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry). Horace was, like Pope, a professional poet who maintained ties with aristocratic patrons to make a living. Although Horace’s father was enslaved, he was able to provide Horace with a good education in Rome, following which Horace studied in Athens and then enlisted in the army. A military defeat in 42 BCE meant that his living as a tribune was cut off, and he lost the family farm; following this loss, he returned to Rome, where he was a scribe until he gained fame with his Satires (Lowrie, Michèle. “Horace.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Michael Gagarin, Oxford University Press, 2010).
Horace significantly influenced Pope, especially in the latter’s use of satire to critique art. Like Pope’s An Essay on Criticism, the Ars Poetica uses a satirical voice to talk about literary criticism and how to write poetry. Pope’s epigraph at the beginning of the poem is a quotation from Horace’s Epistles that translates: “If you know any more correct rules than these, share them frankly with me; if not, use these as I do” (18). Similarly, the Ars Poetica is known for discussing the relationship between poetry and painting, and Pope develops a similar comparison early in his An Essay on Criticism with the simile: “But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, / Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced, / So by false learning is good sense defaced” (Lines 23-25).
Vida
Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566) was a Latin poet who had the patronage of Pope Leo X. Of most significance to Pope is Vida’s long Latin poem the Ars Poetica, which he began before 1520 and published in 1527; it is written in support of the idea of imitating classical authors, particularly Virgil. In addition, Vida’s work focuses on religious topics, including a depiction of Hell in the Christiad (1535) that influenced works by earlier English authors, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) (Campbell, Gordon. “Vida, Marco Girolamo.” The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance, edited by Gordon Campbell, Oxford University Press, 2005).
Pope’s account of the Renaissance in the final section of An Essay on Criticism describes Vida as “Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow / The poet’s bays and critics ivy grow” (Line 705). He uses the example of Vida to further his argument that the poetic muse, after a time of slumber in the “barbarous age” following the fall of Rome, woke up in “Leo’s golden days” (Line 697)—a reference to Pope Leo X.
Dryden
John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet, playwright, and critic; he is characterized by Pope as a modern Timotheus (an Ionian poet from 457-447 BCE) who is able to match his poetic sound with the meaning of his language, just as Pope prescribes: “The power of music all our hearts allow, / And what Timotheus was, is DRYDEN now” (Lines 383-84). Like Pope, Dryden was an imitator and translator of the classical poets, and Pope likely foregrounds him in An Essay on Criticism for this reason. Dryden revised a translation of French author Boileau’s The Art of Poetry (1683) and wrote a poem that praised the work of the Earl of Roscommon, whom Pope also mentions in his Essay.
In addition, Dryden is an important figure because of his conversion to Catholicism in 1686 and subsequent loyalty to the faith despite shifting powers in Britain at the time. Pope’s allegiance to the Catholic faith led to barriers and a critical position similar to those of Dryden in his later years. In particular, Pope considers the way that Dryden’s language and fame may be misunderstood and taken out of context because “our sons their fathers failing language see, / And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be” (Lines 484-85). Dryden translated Chaucer’s works, so this is a very apt lineage that Pope imagines and implicitly positions himself within.
Related Titles
By Alexander Pope
