Strange bedfellows : Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth

Abstract EN

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) are two giants in the history of English literature.

They are the leading figures of Neo-classicism and Romanticism respectively.

In writing literary history, the paper claims, the contrast between Neo-classicism and Romanticism is gendered.

It is one in which Neo-classicism is male, Romanticism is female.

Associating Neo-classicism with reason, order, logic, rationality, and adherence to social conventions casts it in the age-old attributes of masculinity.

Romanticism, on the other hand, is generally represented in terms such as feelings, intuition, nature, and focus on the personal.

These are attributes which have for long been socially and culturally constructed as feminine.

Clearly, the contrast applies to the prominent writers of the two periods: Pope (male) and Wordsworth (female).

The paper, nevertheless, brings forward one aspect of the two poets that usually goes unnoticed.

Both writers share a demeaning vision of criticism and critics.

Criticism, in other words, makes of Pope and Wordsworth strange bedfellows.

Both writers contrast poets with critics, and both privilege the former.

Poets are inventive points of origin, critics are parasitical dependents.

This contrast, the paper claims, is also engendered.

It is a contrast in which poets are male, critics are female.

Ironically, the paper concludes, this engendered contrast can reflect on Pope and Wordsworth – they are critics as well as poets.

As poets, they are masculine, but as critics, they are feminine.

Their dismissal of criticism as parasitical is an attempt to deny the female side of/in themselves.