{"id":349,"date":"2008-06-11T16:59:18","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T15:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?p=349"},"modified":"2009-01-16T13:23:48","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T12:23:48","slug":"an-essay-on-criticism-by-alexander-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?p=349","title":{"rendered":"An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Download<\/strong>
\nParts I and II A4<\/a> | US Letter<\/a> PDF 450Kb
\nPart III A4<\/a> | US Letter<\/a> PDF 280Kb\u00a0<\/p>\n

Selected and Introduced<\/strong> for Short Work<\/a><\/em> by\u00a0Sebastian Mary Harrington<\/a>,\u00a0associate at the\u00a0Institute for the Future of the Book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism<\/em> (1711), written when he was only 20, laid the foundations for many of the artistic and critical hierarchies that have remained constant since in the literary world.<\/p>\n

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in London saw the growing mechanisation of print publishing, and a concurrent boom in both literary production and criticism. Equally, new sales and distribution models increasingly enabled writers to make a living independent of the aristocratic patronage that had been their commonest means of support in earlier times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The glut of writing, and divorce of that writing from the values and aesthetics associated with the ruling classes, prompted a vigorous tussle for critical supremacy among those who believed themselves qualified to pronounce on literature. A widely influential – and hotly contested – intervention in this tussle, Pope’s Essay on Criticism seeks to antedate his creative activities in the Greek and Roman past, by replacing the overt eulogising of aristocratic values with an insistence on the primacy of the classical canon. Pope aims to draw from this composite ancient and modern canon a set of precepts from which his contemporary literature and criticism can be judged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The age of the blogosphere has seen an equivalent explosion in writing, criticism and debate. While few now read Homer, Pope’s essay addresses questions of authority, quality and cultural legitimacy that, online, are as vigorously contested as ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sebastian Mary Harrington<\/a>
\nJune 2008\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexander Pope<\/a>\u00a0(1688-1744) is one of the most acclaimed English poets of the early eighteenth century. Amongst his well known works are The Rape of the Lock<\/em>, The Dunciad,<\/em> Essay on Man<\/em> and his translations of Homer’s The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey<\/em>.<\/p>\n

First Published in London 1711
\nSourced from\u00a0Project Gutenberg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Download Parts I and II A4 | US Letter PDF 450Kb Part III A4 | US Letter PDF 280Kb\u00a0 Selected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,143],"tags":[411,174,146],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebooks","category-short-work","tag-alexander-pope","tag-criticism","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":847,"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}