Alexander Pope

As you have probably noticed, fashions and tastes change quite noticeably over the years, most obviously perhaps in clothes, hairstyles, and popular music. The reputations of writers and artists are no different, though the alternating periods of being in and then out of fashion are longer. A poet may no longer appeal to a large reading public for a number of reasons, though we must keep in mind that poetry is a minority taste and its readership is relatively small in the first place. So, um, I want to look at the reputation of Alexander Pope. In his own lifetime, he was praised and idolized by both his friends and the literary world in general, though he did have some rather vicious enemies. Yet both friends and enemies seemed more concerned with either praising or attacking his character and morals than with properly assessing the poems themselves. The Romantics, of course, had little time for him. Indeed, the Romantic movement, in poetry at least, was an attempt to make a complete break with the strict formality and rationality of the Augustan poets, of whom Pope was the most notable example. They did not regard him as a real poet and complained of his ignorance of nature in the sense of mountains, trees, and flowers. The Victorians were even less responsive to Pope and this was probably the period when his reputation was at its lowest. In fact, it wasn't until the 1920s that Pope and the Augustan poets were re-evaluated, and given the attention and respect, they deserved.