Resemblance & Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of CultureBetween the figure of Alexander Pope, a hunchback standing 4 feet 6 inches tall, and the perfect polished form of his poetry is an undeniable contradiction. Undeniable but not necessarily unfortunate, this contradiction of deformity and form may have been Pope's ultimate couplet, Helen Deutsch suggests, the paradox from which his contemporary cultural authority sprang. By restoring the poet's image to view against the cultural background that branded it as monstrous, Deutsch recasts Pope's literary career, from his translations of Homer to his imitations of Horace, as itself a form of monstrous embodiment - a stamping of his own personal, disfigured image on fragments of the cultural past. In Resemblance and Disgrace deformity appears as a poetics jointly constructed by the author and his audience, and Pope as an instrumental figure in the history of authorship whose personal vision and unique visibility have influenced succeeding images of cultural authority. Like the miniatures of which Pope was so fond, the book is at once particular in its focus and wide-ranging in its conceptual scope. While drawing on recent feminist, historicist, and materialist criticism of Pope, as well as current theoretical work on the body, it also attends closely to the local ambiguities of the poet's texts and cultural milieu, details often lost to critical view. The result is a revitalized and broadened understanding of Pope and of the processes of authorship. By focusing on the process by which ideas of authority and authenticity took shape at specific moments in Pope's career, Resemblance and Disgrace calls into question distinctions between theoretical abstractions and material details, betweenliterary originality and critical derivation, following Pope's own example of rewriting intellectual boundaries as creative opportunities. |
From inside the book
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Page 26
... proper spelling of proper names with a zeal for keeping the proper bodies in the proper places . In this parody , imitation makes Bentley uneasy because it takes liberties with gender in both its physical 26 RESEMBLANCE AND DISGRACE.
... proper spelling of proper names with a zeal for keeping the proper bodies in the proper places . In this parody , imitation makes Bentley uneasy because it takes liberties with gender in both its physical 26 RESEMBLANCE AND DISGRACE.
Page 201
... proper position to see through Pope's satiric medium . Pope can thus claim to be practicing Horace's brand of inoffensive satire while defending the moral border between the reader and his page which such proper reading de- fines . The ...
... proper position to see through Pope's satiric medium . Pope can thus claim to be practicing Horace's brand of inoffensive satire while defending the moral border between the reader and his page which such proper reading de- fines . The ...
Page 217
... proper name and the poem itself , talismanic and untouched like the satirist himself , remain gloriously exempt . The integrity of this exemption is contingent upon the very particularity it defies : such historical particularity ...
... proper name and the poem itself , talismanic and untouched like the satirist himself , remain gloriously exempt . The integrity of this exemption is contingent upon the very particularity it defies : such historical particularity ...
Other editions - View all
Resemblance & Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture Helen Deutsch Limited preview - 1996 |
Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture Helen Deutsch No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
Aeneid aesthetic Alexander Pope Arbuthnot Aubrey Beardsley Augustan beauty becomes Belinda's Burlington Cambridge camera obscura character classical commodity Correspondence couplet Criticism cultural curiosity described display Dryden Dunciad eighteenth Eighteenth-Century emblem English epic Epistle Essay Essay on Criticism female feminine figure Frank Stack genius grotto heroic Homer Horace Horace's Horatian Horatian poems human Ibid ideal Iliad imagination imitation invisible Johnson Lady Mary landscape Latin letter literary Lock London lyric Mack Maecenas Maggott mark medals metaphor metonymy miniature monstrous monument moral moving Toyshop nature object Odes original ornament Oxford painting particular poem's poet poet's poetic Pope's deformity Pope's Garden Pope's poetry Pope's satire portrait quoted Rape Rape's reader reading Roman Samuel Johnson Sappho satirist singular Spence synecdochal things transforms translation transparency trompe l'oeil Twickenham University Press villa virtue visible vision visual William words writing