6 - Pope and the classics

Summary

The question of Pope's relationship to the Greek and Roman classics once was thought clear: he was deeply indebted to them, generally reflected their values, and often imitated them to show modern inadequacy. He was variously called “neoclassical” and “Augustan” in order to suggest that indebtedness. He exemplified and moved within a world of polished, polite poetry and civilized discourse among other civilized neoclassical Augustans. To be “Augustan” was a sign of approbation.

Much of this vision was seen through spectacles regularly prescribed from about the later nineteenth to the later twentieth century. One distinguished American scholar argues that the “true Augustans” saw in “Horace's [65 BC-8 BC] poetry a concentrated image of a life and civilization to which they more or less consciously aspired.” A subsequent distinguished British scholar adds that Pope's imitations recommend “the Augustan ideal in its civilized splendour.” More recently, Pope has begun to be seen surely as indebted to admired classical sources, but also skeptical regarding many of their values and selective in what he chose to respect. So far from being politely “Augustan,” he often was intentionally rude, crude, vulgar, and angry. For example, in what was called “This filthy Simile, this beastly Line” he characterized court politicians as Westphalian hogs feeding off one another's excrement (TE, iv, p. 323; Epilogue to the Satires [1738], ii, 181). He also portrayed corrupt exhibitionist London booksellers engaged in a public urinating contest, in which a well-endowed syphilitic victor carries off a female writer of pornography as his prize so that they can produce infectious books (TE, v, pp. 303-4). In many cases, Pope and his contemporaries berated Augustus Caesar (63 BC-AD 14) and denigrated his supportive poets. The clichés no longer work as a reasonable version of eighteenth-century literary history.