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Pope and the rhetoric of natural phenomena.

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Abstract

An expanded curriculum for a study of the environment in eighteenth-century poetry includes those works in which natural phenomena appear to play a secondary rather than a primary role. Pope's "Epistles to Several Persons" or "Moral Essays" inspire debate about the ways in which images of environmental change and changeableness actualize not only the poet's vision of his surroundings but also his treatment of the ruling passion, the manners and opinions of men and women, the use of riches, and false taste. Students are asked to identify and evaluate the significance of Pope's repeated employment of environmental conceits across the collection of poems as he stages a critique of moral frailty and espouses the employment of good sense or "inner light."

The Eighteenth-Century Environmental Tradition: Expanding the Curriculum

Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Burlington" stands as one of the key poems in what might be deemed an environmental tradition in early eighteenth-century literature. Pope's speaker warns against abusing the natural world, particularly when that abuse takes place under the guise of taste. Students identify with the ecological bent of the speaker as he champions sense in landscape design by offering examples of those who lack such sense. For instance, at Timon's ill-conceived villa, the "pond" appears an "ocean," the "parterre a Down," and the Master "a puny insect, shiv'ring at a breeze" (11. 106-108). While at first glance, Pope's optimistic vision of "another age" in which Englishmen fell their forests for "future Buildings, future Navies" falls short of twenty-first century notions of sustainable development, students of the poem identify with the speaker's concern for those who fail to match their designs with the prerequisite sense such that the landscape becomes a grotesque and those who dwell within it suffer as a consequence (11. 173, 188).

When teaching the environment in eighteenth-century poetry, one might choose to survey a host of poems such as "Burlington" that contemplate the uses of the land (Philips' Cyder), the wonders of scientific discovery or meteorological phenomena (Finch's Upon the Hurricane) or a combination of the two (Thomson's Seasons). To study the rhetoric of natural phenomena is to study how poets use language and imagery of environmental change and changeableness to evaluate both the impact of natural phenomena upon and the similarity of natural phenomena to the manners and opinions of men and women. If the study of a poet's employment of natural phenomena serves well as the means of exploring a text, then an alternative or expanded curriculum also...

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