This is the first detailed exploration of one of the earliest major
poems by Alexander Pope, Windsor-Forest (1713). The book reveals how
Pope used the artistic conventions of the Stuart court, such as masque,
architecture, allegorical painting, and heraldry to create the last
great Renaissance poem in English. A coherent symbolic design is
constructed around the themes of the river and the forest. Pope
organizes the structure and style of the poem to create a prophetic
version of nationhood, drawing on such sources as the plays of Ben
Jonson, the Whitehall paintings of Rubens, the architecture of Inigo
Jones, the panegyric work of Dryden, and the topographical poetry of
Drayton. The political dimensions of the poem are considered in relation
to the foundation of the South Sea Company in 1711, with its
foreshadowing of imperial issues to come. The book will spark further
interest in a poem that has been gaining increasing attention recently
from writers such as E. P. Thompson and Laura Brown. It shows the
centrality of Windsor-Forest in Pope's own career, and the centrality of
Pope in the debates of his time. Pat Rogers is DeBartolo Professor in
the Liberal Arts at the University of