Abstract

"Pope's An Essay of Man has been the centre of controversy ever since it was written and published in the early 1730's."--ABSTRACT. "This study is based on a fresh approach to the poem and to the theodicy it offers. It is suggested that the poem is not to be approached as a philosophical treatise, but as a discourse or conversation similar to those that Pope had with Bolingbroke and his friends as they sat in his Grotto or strolled through the grounds of his natural garden at Twickenham. It is this garden that is not only the setting of the poem, but also the silent illustration of all that Pope says to his friend, Bolingbroke. Pope bases his theodicy on the workings of Nature as found in his own garden and on the principle of "irregular regularities" that he detected in it and in Nature at large. It is because Newtonian science ignored Nature's deviations from mathematical regularity that Pope attacks the new science of his day. He reaffirms the view of Bacon that science must include the science of the mind in all its waywardness."--ABSTRACT. "It is also suggested in this study that in his attempt to vindicate the ways of God to man and make sense of human pain and suffering, Pope followed Bolingbroke's call for a theodicy that was not based on rewards and punishments for virtue and vice after death. Instead, it is argued that Pope turned to an ancient and highly heterodox idea which made man himself individually responsible for his present state in the world. Following from his use of this idea is the view expressed in the poem that each human being is evolving spiritually, and therefore that the claim that "Whatever is, is right" is true only in relation to each individual's or each society's stage of development."--ABSTRACT.