The Rhetorical Self of Alexander Pope's Imitations of Horace

Abstract

In his Imitations of Horace. Alexander Pope undertakes a very special task. Borrowing from the classical tradition, he creates a very characteristic poetic self which quickly becomes apparent to the reader. His linguistic, and thereby fictional, self endeavors to impress upon its reader the gravity of his existence. Yet despite this, Pope's rhetorical self is characterized by an undogmatic tone. Pope chose this rhetorical posture because he found it to be so effective when employed by his predecessors in literary history. As his biographies and critics make clear, the most notable influences on Pope's poetic thought were Michel de Montaigne, Erasmus, and Horace himself. The works of these writers are defined by a similarly undogmatic moral voice. Perhaps the most influential was Montaigne, whose Essais exemplify the rhetorical self in its most patent form. In this study, I will endeavor to analyze and explain the nature of Pope's linguistic self as evidenced in two characteristic works, Epistle I i and Epistle II ii. I will discuss the works themselves, their theoretical framework, and Montaigne's Essais as they apply to Pope's rhetorical self. In addition, I will, at times, employ the modern critical language of Soren Kierkegaard and Paul de Man to develop the theoretical aspects of this thesis. [From introductory section]