Alexander Pope Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Helen Deutsch

Critical Essay by Helen Deutsch

SOURCE: “The ‘Truest Copies’ of a ‘Mean Original,’” in Resemblance & Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture, Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 11-39.

In the following excerpt, Deutsch describes Pope's poetic corpus within the context of the emerging book trade and role of professional writer, relating how the ubiquitous image of the poet marks his poetry as uniquely his own.

Few proficients have a greater genius for Monsters than myself.

“To a Lady from her Brother,” 10 February 1714/15?, Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 277

In this chapter I determine how Alexander Pope's body remains outside, yet inexorably connected to, the orderly mirroring of his couplets. My book thus begins by shifting its focus from the poet's polished lines to the author's distorted body. This body beyond the poetry's frame becomes the central figure for both this poet's life-work, and for the cultural imagination of authorship at a transitional...
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