Pope

A detailed Summary of Pope

In a modern prose translation of an extract from Pope's 'An Essay on Criticism',

Pope's didactic message concerning the proper composition and nature of poetry

becomes simply a functional statement of established principles. We know already, of

course, that a poem's sound "must seem an echo to the sense". What elevates Pope's

poem above the simply instructive is its extraordinarily skilful and witty use of meter

and diction to illustrate these principles. Pope's aim is to highlight the faults of bad

poetry and instruct the would-be poet in the rules of his craft, and this we can see in

the prose translation; however, without his subtle devices, the theme has no

convincing effect on the reader. We want to be assured that Pope 'practices' what he

'preaches'. When we turn to the poem itself, we can see that the message and the

means, the sound and the sense, are so inseparably and skilfully interwoven that the

poem becomes a perfect advertisement for itself. We become convinced of poetry's

duty, and power, to delight as well as to inform.

Pope's masterful use of meter in the poem demonstrates perfectly the way in that an

underlying meter can be established and then subtly va

subdued by sound". The swift anapaestic run-in of this line is followed by the heavy,

Typical of the Neoclassical poets whose satire was a correctional agent against excess

preoccupation with man's general habits and characteristics. 'An Essay on Criticism'

"Now sighs steal out...". The passions alternate quickly and abruptly. Timotheus

One can certainly see throughout the extract that Pope's dry wit and detached

Approximate Word count = 1438
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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