Alexander Pope

by Laura Brown

This book asks us to rethink such a way of understanding Pope. Refusing to accept Pope's version of reality, Laura Brown reads his poems not for what they claim to say, but for what they rationalize away or fail to recognize.

188 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1985

About the author

Laura Brown is the founder of LB Media, and the chair of (RED)’s Creative Council. She sits on the boards of (RED), The Fashion Trust US, and me too. Movement, and Foot Soldiers Park, Selma. Previously, she was editor-in-chief ofInStyle, executive editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and senior editor at W. She earned her BA in arts and communication from Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, Australia. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.

Reviews

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book were a bit bolder in its use of Marx. It surveys the literature on Pope in detail, which makes it a strong and comprehensive introduction to the field, but it doesn't really leave me feeling like it accomplished the kind of dramatic intervention it perhaps signalled. I wanted the whole ideology critique slash and burn demystification hatchet job that so much contemporary postcritical scholarship tells us to expect when reading the Marxists of the 80s. Instead, Brown ends on a nuanced conciliatory note: "The Dunciad figures forth apocalypse and cultural destruction, but we can read it as a celebration of the progressive dimension of capitalist culture. These are the two sides of eighteenth-century history; neither mutually exclusive nor seamlessly compatible, neither at one nor at war" (158). Pope's poetry cannot be reduced to history, apparently; instead, when we interpret it through Marx, "as we uncover the historical significance of these works, they become history – transitory, conditional, contingent" (157). Damn, maybe that's the boldest use of Marx after all.

[غبار · Rating 3 out of 5]

exemplary close reading; i loved "imperialism and poetic form"