"A little learning is a dang'rous thing"... Lovely to read someone who clearly has a lot more than just a little learning when it comes to Pope. Thanks for sharing, Henry. And best of luck for the rest of your PhD, Jane!
My clapback to Mack’s “Pope’s attempt to reconcile Christian theology with Enlightenment rationalism results in a poem that pleases aesthetically but falters philosophically”.
Yes, Pope is arguing to an Enlightenment audience but he is using sweet nothings to tempt those philosophes to the nectar of the grandeur of God. These philosophes only hear his words as nothings. Philosophers dissect the real. The hummingbird that Pope points to they capture and dissect to prove their thesis: it is dead. And they can drive home the point: every dissection yields a dead bird, each unlovely. What a delusion this loveliness, your faith! Such is the bliss of the philosopher. Ah! The futility to “teach vain wits a science little known/ To admire superior sense, and doubt their own!”
It's pleasant to imagine that somewhere (be it a Good, Bad, or Medium Place) Pope and H.L. Mencken might be laughing uproariously together.
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing"... Lovely to read someone who clearly has a lot more than just a little learning when it comes to Pope. Thanks for sharing, Henry. And best of luck for the rest of your PhD, Jane!
Thank you v much indeed:)
Pope’s virtuosity in demonstrating errors as he condemns them always brings me back — in admiration — to the Essay on Criticism.
My clapback to Mack’s “Pope’s attempt to reconcile Christian theology with Enlightenment rationalism results in a poem that pleases aesthetically but falters philosophically”.
Yes, Pope is arguing to an Enlightenment audience but he is using sweet nothings to tempt those philosophes to the nectar of the grandeur of God. These philosophes only hear his words as nothings. Philosophers dissect the real. The hummingbird that Pope points to they capture and dissect to prove their thesis: it is dead. And they can drive home the point: every dissection yields a dead bird, each unlovely. What a delusion this loveliness, your faith! Such is the bliss of the philosopher. Ah! The futility to “teach vain wits a science little known/ To admire superior sense, and doubt their own!”
“Unrelenting heroic couplets.” A redundancy? 😉
Thank you for this entertaining article.