The Cleverist Pro-Pontiff, Pope
(Pope was Catholic, in case the Pro-Pontiff thing doesn’t make much sense.)
Not much to say this time around; if you’re looking for a representative post, this one ain’t gonna be it. Pope wrote the excerpt in our book in a poetic form. His “An Essay on Criticism” reads like an awesome poem. Nothing deep here (see my theory of Shallowism), but I think that this is great. This is one of the few essays that I found interesting the entire way though, and I’m positive it’s because it’s a poem. That being said, I can’t think of anything interesting to comment about it. That doesn’t mean I won’t try, though…
Here’s a question for you: Would you rather be “Clever” or “Smart?” Pope, the lucky man, was both, but in comparison to most literary critics, he seems to have Wit in spades. Of course, the lived in a time where Wit was Wealth, so that makes sense. I’d rather be clever, just in case you were wondering. “An Essay on Criticism” is brilliantly, staggeringly witty; this almost baffles me when I recall that this same offbeat genius wrote the beautiful, coarse (and yes, still clever) “The Rape of the Lock.” Pope got a lion’s share of brains.
“An Essay on Criticism” is 750 lines, pretty much entirely rhyming couplets. Yet, despite this complicated form, Pope still manages to write a fairly spirited discussion of literary criticism, spending a lot of time discussing how stupid and vulgar many literary critics of his age were, and how their foolish meddling hurt readers as well as writers. Poor Pope lived in a great age of writers (I think Shakespeare, Johnson, and Marlow were around there somewhere), and they all at some point or another rail on (other) critics. Poor guys. Must have been hard being the best brains in literature at their time.
Nope, that’s it. Like I said, not much meat in this one. See you next time at AndrewTheory.
