Resemblance and disgrace : Alexander Pope and the deformation of culture
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Resemblance and disgrace : Alexander Pope and the deformation of culture
Harvard University Press, 1996
Available at 9 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Between the figure of Alexander Pope, a hunchback standing barely 4 feet 6 inches tall, and the 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 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 broadened reading of Pope, and of our understanding 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, between literary originality and critical derivation, following Pope's own example of rewriting intellectual boundaries as creative opportunities.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1. The "Truest Copies" of a "Mean Original" 2. The Rape of the Lock as Miniature Epic 3. Twickenham and the Landscape of True Character 4. Horace and the Art of Self-Collection 5. Disfigured Truth and the Proper Name Abbreviations Notes Index
by "Nielsen BookData"