Pope's portraiture : a critical examination of portraiture in the poetry of Alexander Pope

Bibliography: pages 202-210.This work examines and critically evaluates what the author considers to be the chief concerns of Pope's verse portraits, and particularly attempts to trace the manifestations of these concerns in the formal, rather than argumentative or polemic, qualities of Pope's writing. The works selected have accordingly been primarily those in which the density of poetic description of character was sufficient to indicate implicit qualities of psychological interest, sometimes at remarkable variance with more express argument of contemporary theories. Starting from an initial agreement with Dr Johnson concerning Pope's shortcomings as a philosopher, the author chooses works for detailed study on the basis of the various ways they present human types and characters: through a semi-dramatic narrative presentation, through brief life-histories, through descriptive character-sketches, or through implication of character by environment. The author bases much of his work on the idea of a dual interest in Pope's verse, which is partly satiric and aimed at moral.or social correction, partly humorous and aimed at examination or elucidation of human nature. The Dunciad and An Essay on Man are examples of the two interests as opposite extremes; but in most of Pope's work, the author maintains, the functions are complementary