In the essay below, White discusses Pope's idea of reason as subservient to passion for humankind and places Pope's understanding of reason within the context of prevailing eighteenth-century philosophical thought.

In the following essay, Solomon details the historical development of the critical consensus that now regards An Essay on Man as a fundamentally flawed work.

In the following essay, Ferguson links the dialectic of An Essay on Man to its poetic form, emphasizing philosophical and literary dimensions of the concept of discordia concors.

In the following excerpt, Brown analyzes the logic of An Essay on Man, maintaining that the poem incoherently addresses the often contradictory ideological values of capitalism and Christianity.

In the following essay, Atkins explains the theodicy of An Essay on Man in relation to Pope's notion of “the ‘proper,’” deconstructing the poem's central opposition between divine impartiality and human expectation.

In the following essay, Erskine-Hill discusses the political character of the third epistle of An Essay on Man, tracing the influence of contemporary debates, literary antecedents, and Bolingbroke on Pope's interpretation of the origins of society and government.

In the following essay, Gordon explores the intellectual and ethical background of Pope's thought in An Essay on Man, highlighting the poem's expression of prevalent philosophical, religious, and political ideas in early eighteenth-century England.