TOPIC

Pope’s Neoclassicism

Submitted to:- Submitted by:-

Prof……………………………. Kumari Shikha
Department of English Roll No:- 37
Patna University,Patna M.A English 2nd sem
Session:- 2018-2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The success and final outcome of this project required a lot of guidance and assistance
from many people and I am extremely privileged to have got this all along the
completion of my project. All that I have done is only due to such supervision and
assistance and I would not forget to thank them.

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher who gave me the
golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the topic POPE’S
NEOCLASSICISM , which also helped me in doing a lot of Research and i came to
know about so many new things I am really thankful to them.
Secondly i would also like to thank my parents and friends who helped me a lot in
finalizing this project within the limited time frame.

ALEXANDER POPE
Pope was born into a Catholic family in 1688, the year of The Glorious Revolution,
when Catholics could not live in London - the centre of literary life – or attend
university. At the age of twelve he contracted a tubercular disease of the spine which
stunted his growth and ruined his health. Sir Joshua Reynolds later said: 'He was
about four feet six inches high, very hunchbacked and deformed'. As Pope wrote: 'This
long disease, my life'.
Despite – or perhaps because of - these disadvantages, Pope became the first poet to
earn his living entirely by writing. Largely self-educated, he showed precocious metrical
skill in his teens, and his Essay in Criticism (1711) brought him to the attention of the
influential circle around Addison. He was befriended by the elderly playwright William
Wycherley, who introduced him to London life and Pope later became a member of the
Scriblerus Club which also had Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot as members. But his entire
writing career was marked by hostility; early on a contemporary greeted Essay in
Criticism as the work of a hunchbacked toad. Pope gave as good as he got, and in
self-defence made his lifelong case for order and sense against anarchy.
'The Rape of the Lock', however, shows Pope at his most happily relaxed: published in
1712, it mocks the then well known scandal of Lord Petre cutting off a lock of Miss
Arabella's hair. In the solemnity of heroic couplets, Pope both glamourises and belittles
the participants, mocking their pretensions but celebrating them too. He never knew
Arabella Fermor, and had probably never seen her, but the poem sparkles with
affection and erotic attraction.
'The Dunciad', Pope's first major satire after 'The Rape of the Lock', attacks dullness,
pedantry and the misuse of the intellect. It too takes mock heroic form, but is darker,
angrier and sometimes almost despairing. The central figure is Theobald (in later
versions replaced by Cibber) who had attacked Pope's version of Shakespeare, but
there are many other targets recognisable at the time. Wounded vanity plays its part
(Pope settles some old scores; scholars and literary critics block the light) but the
poem is infused with comic energy and a backhand sense of what the world of
literature could be like if the dunces were not in charge. It is a masterpiece, but it
brought Pope the enmity of its targets, and this enmity pursued him for the rest of his
life.
A comic sermon against the corruption of wealth, the 'Epistle to Lord Bathurst' was
published in 1733. The portrait of Buckingham 'The lord of useless thousands' is set
against the respect Pope felt for Bathurst himself. 'A Farewell to London' shows Pope
in far more roguish mode, giving a roistering glimpse of life in the city.
In 1718 Pope moved with his mother to Twickenham where he spent much time in his
garden and grotto: he was keenly interested in landscape gardening. He lived there
until his death in 1744.
Major works
• 1709: Pastorals
• 1711: An Essay on Criticism
• 1712: Messiah
• 1712: The Rape of the Lock (enlarged in 1714)
• 1713: Windsor Forest
• 1715–1720: Translation of the Iliad
• 1717: Eloisa to Abelard

• 1717: Three Hours After Marriage, with others

• 1717: Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
• 1723–1725: The Works of Shakespear, in Six Volumes

• 1725–1726: Translation of the Odyssey

• 1727: Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry
• 1728: The Dunciad

• 1733–1734: Essay on Man

• 1735: The Prologue to the Satires (see the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot and Who breaks a
butterfly upon a wheel?)

NEOCLASSICISM

The English Neoclassical movement, predicated upon and derived from both classical and
contemporary French models, (see Boileau's L'Art Poetique (1674) and Pope's "Essay on
Criticism" (1711) as critical statements of Neoclassical principles) embodied a group of
attitudes toward art and human existence — ideals of order, logic, restraint, accuracy,
"correctness," "restraint," decorum, and so on, which would enable the practitioners of various
arts to imitate or reproduce the structures and themes of Greek or Roman originals. Though its
origins were much earlier (the Elizabethan Ben Jonson, for example, was as indebted to the
Roman poet Horace as Alexander Pope would later be), Neoclassicism dominated English
literature from the Restoration in 1660 until the end of the eighteenth century, when the
publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge marked the full emergence
of Romanticism.

For the sake of convenience the Neoclassic period can be divided into three relatively
coherent parts: the Restoration Age (1660-1700), in which Milton, Bunyan, and Dryden were
the dominant influences; the Augustan Age (1700-1750), in which Pope was the central poetic
figure, while Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were presiding over the sophistication
of the novel; and the Age of Johnson(1750-1798), which, while it was dominated and
characterized by the mind and personality of the inimitable Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose
sympathies were with the fading Augustan past, saw the beginnings of a new understanding and
appreciation of the work of Shakespeare, the development, by Sterne and others, of the novel of
sensibility, and the emergence of the Gothic school — attitudes which, in the context of the
development of a cult of Nature, the influence of German romantic thought, religious tendencies
like the rise of Methodism, and political events like the American and French revolutions —
established the intellectual and emotional foundations of English Romanticism.

To a certain extent Neoclassicism represented a reaction against the optimistic, exuberant,

and enthusiastic Renaissance view of man as a being fundamentally good and possessed of an
infinite potential for spiritual and intellectual growth. Neoclassical theorists, by contrast, saw
man as an imperfect being, inherently sinful, whose potential was limited. They replaced the
Renaissance emphasis on the imagination, on invention and experimentation, and on mysticism
with an emphasis on order and reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on religious,
political, economic and philosophical conservatism. They maintained that man himself was the
most appropriate subject of art, and saw art itself as essentially pragmatic — as valuable
because it was somehow useful — and as something which was properly intellectual rather than
emotional.

Hence their emphasis on proper subject matter; and hence their attempts to subordinate
details to an overall design, to employ in their work concepts like symmetry, proportion, unity,
harmony, and grace, which would facilitate the process of delighting, instructing, educating,
and correcting the social animal which they believed man to be. Their favorite prose literary
forms were the essay, the letter, the satire, the parody, the burlesque, and the moral fable; in
poetry, the favorite verse form was the rhymed couplet, which reached its greatest
sophistication in heroic couplet of Pope; while the theatre saw the development of the heroic
drama, the melodrama, the sentimental comedy, and the comedy of manners. The fading away
of Neoclassicism may have appeared to represent the last flicker of the Enlightenment, but
artistic movements never really die: many of the primary aesthetic tenets of Neoclassicism, in
fact have reappeared in the twentieth century — in, for example, the poetry and criticism of T.
S. Eliot — as manifestations of a reaction against Romanticism itself: Eliot saw Neo-classicism
as emphasising poetic form and conscious craftsmanship, and Romanticism as a poetics of
personal emotion and "inspiration," and pointedly preferred the former.

NEOCLASSICAL POET’S
English poets from 1660 A.D. to 1798 A.D. are generally known as Neoclassical poets.
They are so called because they had a great respect for classical writers and imitated
much from them. For them, poetry was an imitation of human life.

1. John Dryden

2. Alexander Pope

3. Thomas Gray

4.William Blake

5. Robert Burns

According to Britannica Encyclopaedia:

"Classicism and Neoclassicism, in the arts, historical tradition or
aesthetic attitudes based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity.
In the context of the tradition, Classicism refers either to the art
produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by that of antiquity;
Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced later but inspired by
antiquity. Thus the terms Classicism and Neoclassicism are often
used interchangeably."

POPE’S NEOCLASSICAL ERA

His works:-
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM
INRODUCTION
When Samuel Johnson ascribed to a new work ìsuch extent of comprehension, such nicety of
distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of both ancient and
modern learning as not often attained by the maturest age and longest experience,î he was
speaking of young Alexander Popeís An Essay on Criticism (1711), written when he was about
twenty, and published when he was only twenty-three years old (in Mack 177).1 Others have
not been as generous in their comments about the prodigyís efforts. One history of criticism
textbook describes the work rather ingloriously: ìThere are repetitions and inconsistencies,
some conventional pronouncements along with injunctions of lasting value; but nowhere . . .
are the principles organized into a coherent whole, and no cut-and-dried theory [of criticism]
therefore emergesî (in Morris 145).2 Despite this harsher pronouncement, Alexander Popeís
An Essay on Criticism stands as a monument to the principles of English neo-classical poetics
which revered the works of the ancients, recognized the validity of classical criteria and
genres, and desired to see the ancient criteria and genres applied to the eighteenth century
English literary scene (Isles 262). For this reason and others, many believe that An Essay on
Criticism makes an original and significant contribution to the history of critical theory (Morris
146). Pope divided the work into three parts. Part one is an extended theoretical defense of
the very possibility of valid criticism which draws on Nature and the tradition of the ancients.
The second part details the traits that could hinder fruitful criticism and lead to errors in
critical judgment. The final section presents the intellectual and moral virtues which facilitate
the criticís craft. My goal in the following pages will be to itemize and explain the principal
principles of neo-classical criticism as these have been deposited in Pope ís noble war.

Principles of Neo-Classical Poetics in Pope’s An Essay on Criticism

There are many concepts regarding literary criticism that are instantiated in the first part of
Popeís Essay: the problem of bad writing and criticism, and the greater danger of the latter to
the public; the rarity of genius and taste in poets and critics respectively; the impairing of the
capacity of critical judgment by unsound education; the causes for the multitude of literary
critics (those who canít write, judge!); and the criticís need to know the limits of his genius,
taste, and learning in the exercise of criticism. But two themes stand out above the rest: the
role of ìNatureî in the art of poetics andcriticism, and the role of the ancient poet/critics as the
exemplars for contemporary literary activity. Each of these principles needs to be explicated in
some detail. What is the basis for literary composition and the practice of criticism? What
provides the common ground and gives guidance for both? For Pope, the answer was found in
a specific eighteenth century understanding of the honorific term and concept of NATURE.
First follow Nature and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring NATURE, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force,
beauty, must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of Art. (Lines 68-73) Nature is
the ultimate authority (Williams 219) in Pope ís Essay, and is presented here as that canon or
standard to which both wit (creative poetic and literary expression) and critical judgment are
to conform. Authors and critics are to write and to judge according to the clear, unchanged,
and universal light standards of inerrant Nature. In literature and criticism, Nature is all-
significant as its source, as its aim, and as its test. Art is from Nature, unto Nature, and by
Nature. But what, exactly, does Pope mean by this all-encompassing concept? Williams
expresses the eighteenth-century, neo-classical understanding of this doctrine in these terms.
Fundamental to neo-classical thought about Nature is the conception of a cosmos which, in its
order and regularity and harmony, reflects the order and harmony of the Divine Mind of its
Creator. . . . Man can perceive this order and rule in Nature because he has a rational soul
made in the image of that Nature ís Creator. . . . In the view which prevails in the period
Nature is the manifestation in the visible creation of the Order and Reason behind all things, a
reflection of the medieval view that the likeness of God is imprinted in the very matter and
organization of the universe .
Popeís purpose here, of course, is not to offer praise to Nature, but to propose to wits and
critics alike that it is by Nature that they are to frame their judgments. Nature provides the just
and changeless standard which ensures felicitous compositions and accurate judgments.
Nature provides absolute and necessary criteria for all artistic endeavor, and the justification
of such activity is sustained by Natureís universality, permanence, presence, and power. The
language of Popeís text (as well as the language of this commentary) is noticeably vague, a fact
for which Pope was frequently censured. John Dennis in his Reflections (cf. page one, note
two) complained that Pope should have said exactly what he meant by Nature, and stated
precisely what he intended by writing and judging according to Nature (Williams 219). Pope
did expand on his thought in the next pericope (or unit of text) when he suggested that the
process of composing and critiquing according to Nature was exemplified by the art and rules
of the ancients. Those Rules of old discovered, not devised, Are Nature still, but Nature
methodized; Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained By the same Laws which first herself
ordained. (Lines 88-91) Ancient literature manifests Natureís rules, for as bard of Twickenham
wrote in line 135, ìNature and Homer were, he found, the same.î To draw principles of
literature from these venerable works would be, for all practical purposes, to draw them from
Nature. They were ìNature still, but Nature methodized,î and hence applicable to the present
context. Since Natureís aesthetic principles were embodied in the rules and texts of
civilizationís patriarchal poets and critics, Pope admonished his readers to ìhear how learned
Greece her useful rules indicts, When to repress, and when to indulge our flightsî (92-93). The
guidelines of the Greek authors, once ascertained, would enable English men of letters to
know when to limit and when to give way to their creative impulses. For poetry and criticism
to be excellent, it must conform to Nature, and the 5 clearest indication of the aesthetic laws
of Nature was found in the primordial Greek writers. Study and follow them: ìLearn hence for
ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy themî (Lines 139-40). This conception
leads nicely into the second most important neo-classical principle in the first part of Popeís
Essay, namely the role and importance of the ancients, especially Homer and Virgil, as models
for literary and critical activity. This is only logical and may be expressed syllogistically: (1)
Nature is the source and justification of literary works of art. (2) The works of the ancients are
the embodiment of Nature. (3) Hence, the works of the ancients are the source and
justification of art. (4) Therefore study them. Pope, of course, put it poetically: You then whose
judgment the right course would steer, Know well each ANCIENTíS proper character; His Fable,
Subject, scope in every page; Religion, Country, genius of his Age: Without all these at once
before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticize. Be Homerís works, your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night; Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims
bring, And trace the Muses upward to their spring. Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse. (Lines 118-129) While others had counseled
young writers to read their literary elders as exemplars, here Pope so admonished for a unique
purpose, namely to ascertain fixed, universal standards as the manifestations of Nature which
serve as the foundation for literary composition and as the validation of judgments in criticism.
ìIn isolating nature and the classics as universal standards for validating the possibility of
individual judgment, Pope . . . offered English criticism the theoretical foundations of an
authentic artî (Morris 152). 6 In concluding Part One of his Essay, Pope is so taken with the
natural goodness of the primeval authors that he has difficulty restraining himself in declaring
their praise. The religious nature of their veneration is not only transparent, but also
significant literarily. ìHere in worship before a common altar, divisions and sects and quarrels
in criticism are forgotten as men unite in a single congregation. The learned from all climes
and ages bring . . . their incense to a common shrine. . . . Popeís verse . . . rises in full response
to the inspiration his age received from a glorious past, a past which was both an inspiration,
and a reproach, to the presentî (Williams 229). Hail, Bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise! Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll
down, enlarging as they flow; Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, And worlds
applaud that must not yet be found! Oh may some spark of your celestial fire, The last, the
meanest of your sons inspire, (That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights; Glows while
he reads, but trembles as he writes) To teach vain Wits a science little known, Tí admire
superior sense, and doubt their own! We see, then, that Popeís poetics in An Essay on
Criticism begin with reflections on a golden age, those ìhappier daysî suffused with the ìclear,
unchangíd, and Universal Lightî of Nature, the creator and source of all literary truth and
value, with whom the first men, the literary AdamsóHomer and Virgilóare in spiritual union,
serving one another.4 Part One is Popeís poetic and literary analogue to Genesis and Creation,
and his ìdoctrine was that the world of Man was created perfect in Adam; since the Fall of
Man . . . his world has been in a process of progressive decay; it follows therefore that ancient
men who lived nearer the state of perfection could be and make things more nearly perfect
than any modern. . . î (Griffith in Williams 227-28). Appropriately, Part Two of Pope ís Essay
documents the fall of literary man. The former glory of the Republic of letters is besmirched.
Pope ís own literary paradise is lost and now littered with the rampant vice that retards true
critical judgment. The account begins with a reflection on ìprideîóthe cause of the original fall,
the source of the decays in human nature, and thus in the arts. Part Two: In his description of
the ìfallî of criticism in his own or any age, Pope assumed the role of a prophet, and spoke as
the critic of critics. He cited what he believed to be the characteristics of misguided acts of
criticis causes which conspire to blind Manís erring judgment, and misguide the mind (Lines
201-02). In addition to pointing out vices, in most cases Pope offered counsel to critics that
they might be restored to their true vocation. He surveys no less than fifteen foible só the
deadly critical sins too many, obviously, to be discussed here.5 I will focus on the issues of
pride and envy which may be regarded as the capital sins of the profession.
For Pope, pride was ìthe never-failing voice of foolsî (Line 204). When a critic lacks the acumen
necessary for his task, often times the lacunae is replaced with hubris. Or, as he put it in Essay
on Man, ìEach want of happiness by hope supplied, and each vacuity of sense by Prideî (II.
285-86, italics added). Only sober reasoning would return the supercilious to a right and true
estimate of things. Since we are myopic and self-blinded, we should embrace friend and
enemy alike in order to form a true estimate of ourselves. In Popeís phrases, Pride, where Wit
fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty Void of sense. If once right reason
drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. Trust not yourself; but your
defects to know, Make use of every friendóand every foe. (Lines 209-14) However, there is the
possibility that pride will refuse to be squelched, and instead produce an off spring envy, the
vice with which Part Two of Pope ís lecture concludes. In his Essay on Man, in commending
virtue as the means to happiness, Pope described and denounced envy by saying that the
virtuous man was ever elated, while one man ís oppressed; Never dejected, while another ís
blessed (IV. 323-26). This, however, is the temptation of the prideful critic: to rejoice at a wit ís
failings, and to weep at his success. Such behavior is the mark of a writer dominated by self-
love and poetic jealousy. It is an unhappy sport, a foolish game among contending wits, that
Pope said destroyed genuine criticism. Nonetheless it is to these base end and abject ways
that men are moved by that sacred lust of praise.
Now, they who reach Parnassusí lofty crown,
Employ their pains to spurn some others down;
And while self-love each jealous writer rules,

Contending wits become the sport of fools:

But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill Author is as bad a friend.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways,

Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise!
Pope, an astute observer of human nature, knew what envy could do: ì íTis what the vicious
fear, the virtuous shun, By fools ítis hated, and by knaves undone!î (Lines 506-07). Envy is a
destroyer and must be abandoned, and one means to that end was to be quick to recognize
the genuine accomplishment in another: ìBe thou the first true merit to befriend: His praise is
lost, who stays till all commendî (Lines 474-75). But most of all Pope recommended an
extirpation in the critic of the thirst for glory since its quest would end up despoiling the man.
The purging of this vice would be the result of the combination of character and reason, but
weaknesses must be recognized and forgiveness bestowed.
Ah neíer so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the Critic let the Man be lost.
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine. (Lines 522-25)
In any case, pride is the chief of the criticís sins. As Clark points out in this biblico-theological
comparison, ìJust as pride can be the most subtle of the sins that separate man from a true
understanding of God, it can stand between the critic and nature, reason, and judgment. . . .
Thus the sin of pride in a critic corresponded to the sin of not ëfollowing Natureí (in art). . . .
[Furthermore] the other faults in critics enumerated in the rest of Part II spring from pride in
one realm or another: imperfect learning; judging by parts of a poem, not by the whole;
partiality to ancients or moderns; prejudice; singularity (individualism); inconstancy; political
bias; and envyÖî (36). Thus, the vocation of poetry and criticismóestablished in the golden
classical era of Homer, Aristotle, and Virgil, and now fallen through the capital offenses of
pride and envy, must be cleansed of its defects and restored to its natural capacities and
virtues that it might fulfill its aesthetic and social functions. This restoration of the poet/critic
is the theme of Part 10 Three of Popeís Essay, and contributes, according to Williams, to the
larger design of the poem as its climax (225).
Part Three:
What is a ìredeemedî critic? What does he look like in character and ability? For questions
likes these, Pope exhorts in the first line of this section to ìLearn then what MORALS Critics
ought to showî (Line 560). The use of this terms ìMORALSî foreshadows the serious ethical
tone of this entire section which forms a fitting conclusion to the poemís overall pattern which
has stressed the loss of poetic and critical virtue and the need for its recovery. As Williams
writes, ìThe ruin which entered the larger world, and inevitably invaded the world of art, was
the result of moral failure. Restoration of the decays in critics and in criticism must be based,
then, on moral reformation. Without such reformation the genius of a critic may always be
used for petty and malicious endsî (231). Since it is but half of a criticís task to know, Pope,
with telegraphic efficiency, itemizes the five fundamental moral virtues of a critic. One, truth
and candor: ìíTis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join; In all you speak, let truth and
candor shineî (Lines 561-62). Two, modesty: ìBe silent always when you doubt your sense; And
speak, though sure, with seeming diffidenceî (Lines 566-67). Three, good breeding: ìWithout
good breeding, truth is disapproved; That only makes superior sense belovedî (Lines 576-77).
Four, sincerity and generosity of advice: ìBe niggards of advice on no pretence; For the worst
avarice is that of sense. With mean complacence neíer betray your trust, Nor be so civil as to
prove unjust. Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof, who merit
praiseî (Lines 578-83). Five, restraint: ìíTis best sometimes your censure to restrain, And
charitably let the dull be vainî (Lines 596-97). Unfortunately not all have succeeded in
recovering these traits, and so Pope presented a description of an incorrigible poet and a
contumelious critic. Of the former he wrote, What crowds of these, impenitently bold, In
sounds and jingling syllables grown old, Still run on Poets, in a raging vein, Even to the dregs
and squeezings of the brain (Lines 604-07). And of the latter mad abandoned critics, Pope
spoke disdainfully: The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his
head (Lines 612-13). In their arrogance and impetuosity, no poet or playwright is protected
from their cavil, for some critics are fools, and Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread (Line
625). Over against these negative examples, Pope provides a grandiloquent description of his
model poet/critic. Popeís paradigm of poetic and critical virtue is a tour de force for the
oxymoron in that his paragon is able to reconcile the tensions between multiple binary
oppositions and bring them together into an authentic and homogeneous whole. Hence this
critical virtuoso is, among other qualities, knowledgeable yet humble; learned yet well bred;
well bred yet sincere; modest yet bold; humane yet severe; closed yet open; theoretical yet
practical; loving yet rational. Pope inquired regarding the whereabouts of this literary maven.
But whereís the man, who counsel can bestow,
Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiased, or by favour or by spite;
Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;
Though learned, well bred;
and though well bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe:
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,

And gladly praise the merit of a foe?

Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;
A knowledge both of books and human kind;
Generous converse; a soul exempt from pride;

And love to praise, with reason on his side?

Where is this man, Pope asks? In history past! Pope concludes the Essay with a survey which
traces the transmission of the cultural treasure of critical excellence from time to time and
place to place. Moving from the East to the West and from the ancient to the modern, the
light of Nature first illuminated the critics of Greece and Rome (Aristotle, Horace, Dionysius,
Petronius, Quintilian, Longinus). Then after the darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages,
civilization and the arts next shone brightly in Italy, faded again only to reappear in France and
England (Erasmus, Vida, Boileau, Roscommon). It is an argument by which Pope suggests that,
throughout the course of time and despite time ís deteriorations, there have been great, and
good, critics whom the men of his own age might propose to themselves as patterns for
imitation (Williams 232). With these critical heroes to emulate, Pope suggested that poetic
restoration might be achieved.
 CONTENTS
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
 ABOUT ALEXANDER POPE
 WHAT IS NEOCLASSICISM?
 POPE’S NEOCLASSICAL ERA
 PRINCIPLES OF NEOCLASSICAL POETICS IN
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM
 CONCLUSION