Summary of Pope's an Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope: “An Essay on Criticism”

Alexander Pope was a great literary figure in London during the eighteenth century (Jacobus 699). He wrote in a poetic style that was new and upcoming for that specific time in the world. “An Essay on Criticism” is his most well-known piece of work. The poem it on the longer side and is full of twisting, rhyming words that can be hard to interpret. What follows will be one’s interpretation and summary of Pope’s poem, “An Essay on Criticism”.

The easiest way to interpret and summarize a poem is by looking at the work in segments that are known as stanzas. Each paragraph of this essay will be connected to a stanza therefore giving this paper organization and space to fully develop the summary. There are fifteen stanzas in total so one will start with the first stanza (Jacobus 701).

Pope had his choice on how to begin his poem and he chose pride. There are many ways that pride is used but in this case, Pope chose to use pride with the idea that one thinks they are better, more important and above all others. “Of all the Causes which conspire to blind man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind, what the weak head with strongest bias rules, is Pride, the never-failing voice of fools” (Jacobus 702). Pope is saying that pride is what makes men have poor judgment, it is where bias comes from and most conflict between people of the human race. Pride is a powerful emotion and those who speak with puffed-up pride usually go unheard by those to whom they are speaking.

Continuing on to stanza two, Pope chose lack of learning as his next topic. “While from the bounded level of our mind, short views we take, nor see the lengths behind; but more advanced, behold with strange surprise new distant scenes of endless science rise!” (Jacobus 703). One can interpret this to mean that the less we learn, the less one is able to metaphorically “see”, the less capable one is to think and wonder. However, he goes on to say that the more one...