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Class Notes on Pope
Pope is the most famous and influential English poet of the 18th century.
He perfected and popularized the heroic couplet (paired, rhymed lines of iambic pentameter, often end-stopped at the second line). This is a very orderly poetic form, like the orderly universe that he posits in Essay on Man.
He selected poetry for his philosophical poem for 2 main reasons:
(1) He believed that the "principles, maxims, or
precepts so written both strike the reader more strongly at first and are
more easily retained by him afterwards." (We remember poetry, mainly,
because of the rhymes; the lines can "get stuck" in one's head.
(2) He felt that he could express himself "more
shortly" this way than in prose.
Pope is somewhat of an outsider in many ways. His dwarfish and deformed body made him physically different. He was also Catholic in a country frequently hostile to Catholicism. Because of his religion, he could not attend the universities. How does this play into the work? Why would it be important for such a person to believe in an ultimately just and positive universe? Is the poem really vindicating God's ways to Pope maybe?
His goal at the outset of this work is to "vindicate the ways of God to man." This line is a certain allusion (almost exact quotation) from Milton in Paradise Lost who claims he wants to "justify the ways of God to man." This change of phrasing cannot be underestimated. Why change the wording? It could possibly reflect the increased skepticism of the 18-century audience. To justify means to merely show to be right, but to vindicate indicates a more combative stance, to protect something from attack.
Opening: life is like a garden but has a plan. The garden as a prototype should always remind the reader at some level of the Garden of Eden. Here, Pope makes the connection for us. The idea of original sin in that garden is essential to the poem. What was really humanity's sin? The quest for knowledge that is off limits? Pope exclaims that people are condemned to repeat this sin, to desire to know the structure and function of the universe--things which are and must be off limits to us.
As only a small part of creation, he argues, we cannot and should not see the entire pattern, the ultimate connection of all things. We must simply have faith in the justice of a benevolent God.
The orderliness of this universe is revealed in Pope's belief in the Great Chain of Being. It is essential to the maintenance of this order that we do not attempt to transcend our place in this chain.
Humans, he argues, always seem to do this. We want the perfect rationality of angels and God (to be the "God of God") and the heightened senses of the animals (look at his images, especially if man had hypothetically the eyesight of a fly, a famous and important passage).
Human beings want to know their fate, but really should not. We would risk the happiness that we do have in the world. He uses another famous image to make his point: if the lamb in the field knew s/he would be dinner that night s/he would not be as carefree--same for us. This idea culminates in the most famous quotation in the work: "Hope springs eternal in the human breast:/ Man never Is, but is always To be blest." Be sure you carefully understand what Pope means by this idea.
Another important point that he makes: our pride makes us believe that we are the apex of creation. We incorrectly believe that the universe exists for us.
All of this culminates in an intense optimism, best articulated in the important phrase "Whatever is, is right." That is, whatever happens does so for a reason. This reason is not one we can or should understand or explain as it is part of a plan much beyond our own scope. Is this argument persuasive? Voltaire will later explore both the ridiculousness and danger of such a philosophy in Candide. Comparing the two perspectives, you get both sides of the debate..