University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 4-4-2003 Alexander Pope's Opus Magnum as Palladian Monument Cassandra C. Pauley University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at:https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of theAmerican Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Pauley, Cassandra C., "Alexander Pope's Opus Magnum as Palladian Monument" (2003).Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/1449 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ALEXANDER POPE’S OPUS MAGNUM AS PALLADIAN MONUMENT by CASSANDRA C. PAULEY A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Pat Rogers, Ph.D., Litt. D. William Heim, Ph.D. Laura Runge, Ph.D. Sape Zylstra, Ph.D. Date of Approval: April 4, 2003 Keywords: Moral Essays, poetry, eighteenth-century, architecture, reconciliation © Copyright 2003, Cassandra C. Pauley Table of Contents List of Figures .....................................................................................ii Abstract ............................................................................................ iii Preface...............................................................................................v Chapter 1- Clearing the Site and Laying the Foundation ............................1 Chapter 2 - The Architectural Background............................................. 13 Chapter 3 - Arcuated Articulation......................................................... 48 Chapter 4 - Best Intentions................................................................. 56 Chapter 5 - Order from Confusion........................................................ 69 Chapter 6 - Seesaw or Fulcrum?.......................................................... 79 Chapter 7 - Strife and a Wife: To a Lady..............................................100 Chapter 8 - A Proper Study: To Cobham ..............................................135 Chapter 9 - Between the Ends: To Bathurst..........................................167 Chapter 10 - Building Bridges: To Burlington ........................................199 Chapter 11 - Carrying the Dome.........................................................235 Works Cited.....................................................................................244 About the Author.......................................................................End Page i List of Figures Figure 1 – Man in Proportion ..............................................................239 Figure 2 – Palladio and Pope in Four Books...........................................240 Figure 3 – Index to the “Ethic Epistles” (1734)......................................241 Figure 4 – Arches in Elevation ............................................................242 Figure 5 – Pendentive to Dome...........................................................243 ii Alexander Pope’s Opus Magnum as Palladian Monument Cassandra C. Pauley ABSTRACT The overarching goal of this study is to suggest that Alexander Pope did not abandon his project for a “system of ethics in the Horatian way,” but rather that in his final days he did find a way to unite the parts at hand into a viable whole. Constructing such an argument, however, requires a similar building up from the parts, and so the core focus becomes a study on the way the image of an arch can serve as a metaphor for Pope’s reconciliation scheme in his Moral Essays as he “steers betwixt” seeming opposites. To justify this approach, I note the works of critics who have studied Pope’s use of the sister arts, the works of architectural theorists and historians, as well the works of critics who focus on various reconciliatory strategies. Perhaps more importantly, I look back to Pope’s correspondence and Joseph Spence’s record to establish not only Pope’s interest in architecture, but also his actual architectural endeavors. From this foundation, I relate Pope’s intentions for his opus magnum and indicate the connections that can be drawn between the four epistles of Essay on Man and the four epistles that Pope selected to comprise the “death-bed” edition of his ethic work, namely To a Lady, To Cobham, To iii Bathurst, and To Burlington. Finally, I examine Pope’s method of reconciling the extremes he presents by exemplum in the Moral Essays by comparing the personal and societal pressures that form the basis of Pope’s satire to the vertical and lateral thrusts that enable an arch to stand, even as they threaten its destruction should the forces become unbalanced. From such an architectural perspective, one can trace Pope’s conception of man in his middle state as he makes the transition from the abstract plan established in Essay on Man, through the pendentive formed by the arches of the Moral Essays, and ultimately to the ideal state of existence that is represented by the dome. The final result can be conceived of as no less than a monument to Pope’s life and art. iv Preface As this study develops in a way similar to that of the epistles that make up Alexander Pope’s Moral Essays—that is, the argument develops incrementally over the first two-thirds of the work, is then confirmed with illustrations from the poems, and finally ends with what might be construed as a compliment to its dedicatee—it might be helpful to have an overview before proceeding. The core focus is on the image of an arch as a metaphor for Pope’s reconciliation scheme in his Moral Essays as he “steers betwixt” seeming opposites. However, from that fundamental structure a model can be developed that will unite parts into a whole. Specifically, by conceiving of these epistles as arches, or more specifically, as elevations of arches (in that they are illustrations of the plan Pope set out in his Essay on Man), one can see that Pope’s opus magnum was not a failed and forgotten project at all, but rather that Pope did achieve a reasonable completion of this effort. In fact, when seen through this architectural metaphor, Pope’s opus magnum can be seen as no less than a monument to his enduring legacy. Please note, too, that in referencing sources, I have cited primary texts parenthetically, but have moved secondary sources and contextual notes to footnotes. v Chapter 1- Clearing the Site and Laying the Foundation “Here I am, like Socrates, distributing my Morality among my friends, just as I am dying” the Rev. Joseph Spence records Pope as saying, as the poet sorted out presentation copies of his “Ethic Epistles” to give to his friends just weeks before his death (Correspondence, IV: 525). Pope was not just distributing his morality, nor even a new set of poems, however; he was actually trying to recover his life’s goal in his final days. He was trying to resurrect his opus magnum, a project he had seemingly abandoned a decade after it had begun. While Pope was able to effect an approximation of this great work by pairing four epistles with his Essay on Man, some especially written for the occasion and others revised to fit it, critics have often discounted the finish of the “finished” product, if even conceding there was one. Perhaps some of the fault lies with Pope, himself, for having publicized his ever-changing grand scheme in various forms over a number of years, but I think a reading of the four epistles he did ultimately settle upon can put the success of his opus magnum in a new light. Pope first mentioned his plan for “a system of ethics in the Horatian way” in a letter to Jonathan Swift dated November 28, 1729, partially in response to Lord Bolingbroke’s enthusiastic letter to Swift wherein he essentially leaked Pope’s plan. To Burlington was the first of the four epistles 1 published, and despite the fact that a revised edition of the poem proved to be integral to what would later be called the Moral Essays, it was initially planned to accompany one of Burlington’s editions of Palladio’s works. While the number of epistles Pope planned for inclusion in Book II of his ethic work varied over the years, it is actually most fitting that Pope settled on four epistles to elaborate the four sections of Essay on Man. In fact, Pope’s repeated use of four sections in his works implies an understanding of four as representing completeness—wholeness—and the concept of the whole was an important one in Pope’s work. One of his most important revisions included adding a fourth book to The Dunciad, and his Pastorals quite naturally, but not incidentally, were written to correspond to the four seasons. Furthermore, while Pope described “three distinct tours in poetry; the design, the language, and the versification,” Spence comments that “he afterwards seemed to add a fourth, the expression; or manner of painting the humours, characters, and things that fall within your design.”1 Pope further characterized his work in reference to the number four when he outlined for Spence a four-part development of his body of work, explaining: My works are now all well laid out. The first division of them, contains all that I wrote under twenty-six; which may be called my Juvenilia.—The second; my translations from different authors, under the same period.—The 1 Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations and Characters of Books and Men (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1964) 46. 2 third; my own works since.—And the fourth; my Translations and Imitations.2 In addition, Pope would undoubtedly have been aware of the numerological aspects of the number four, and a numerological significance might be instructive to the works under consideration here, as well, since four is the number of the builder, of construction, and of system and order. The number four is also said to symbolize the act of putting ideas into form, and this would accord well with a work that was conceived of a system of ethics meant to set man in order with the universe. The architectural overtones cannot be overlooked, either. As Annemarie Schimmel and Franz Carl Endres note, Rome was called “Roma quadrata” because of its shape, and thus “the square became the symbol of [. . .] a civic center.”3 Moreover, Schimmel insists that “[f]our is inseparably connected with the first known order in the world, and thus points to the change from nature to civilization by arranging a confusing multiplicity of manifestations into fixed forms.”4 This, too, supports the contention that architecture is the defining feature of civilization, and Pythagoreans similarly ascribed meaning to the number four in spatial terms. As Schimmel notes, for Pythagoreans, four was the ideal number, and its connection to the material world was expressed by the fact that “the fourth 2 Spence, 1964, 162. 3 Annemarie Schimmel and Franz Carl Endres, The Mystery of Numbers (New York: Oxford UP, 1993) 102. 4 Schimmel 86. 3