Although Pope's reputation as a poet has never been higher among
scholars and academics, changes in our attitudes to the writing of
poetry and to traditional literary values and fashions in versification
have created barriers between his genius and the general reader. Pope's
poetry has to struggle against the assumptions that verse two centuries
ago, filled with allusions to forgotten myths and contemporary
personalities, can have little to say that is 'relevant'. Professor
Gooneratne's study effectively shows how these barriers can be
surmounted by the reader, allowing Pope's work to make its impact upon
the imagination in its own way, as the expression of a powerful poetic
personality which developed over forty years of continuous authorship.
Every major poem in the Pope canon is fully and critically discussed,
related to social circumstances that governed its composition and
considered both as an example of generic writing and as an expression of
personal feelings and convictions. Through detailed analysis of Pope's
diction and poetic technique, Professor Gooneratne shows how his best
and most deeply-felt verse expresses the living values of the Age of
Enlightenment and demonstrates how a good writer can simultaneously
extend and criticise the standards of his society.
