“MERIT WINS THE SOUL”: ALEXANDER POPE’S HUMOROUS REJECTION OF MODERNISM IN THE TEMPLE OF FAME

Selena Özbaş

EN TR

“MERIT WINS THE SOUL”: ALEXANDER POPE’S HUMOROUS REJECTION OF MODERNISM IN THE TEMPLE OF FAME

Abstract

The querelle between the ancients and the moderns which was introduced into pre-revolutionary France by Charles Perrault was later revived by Jonathan Swift in The Battle of the Books, published as a prolegomenon to A Tale of a Tub (1704). Swift’s revisiting of the French question as to whether the ancients championed over the moderns or the moderns were simply “dwarfs standing upon the shoulders of giants” in William Temple’s words, allowed an English reinterpretation of the quarrel. Alexander Pope, who industriously contributed to this process of reinterpretation, exposed the ways in which the eighteenth-century reception of the classics and forerunning literary models defeated the modernist upheaval in literature. In this context, the present study aims at focusing on Pope’s rejection of this modernist upheaval in his rarely examined re-writing of Chaucer’s House of Fame. Identifying Pope’s poetic mission in The Temple of Fame as a humorous counter-argument against the moderns, the encapsulation of the idea of classical “merit” which is achieved through an imitation and rewriting of the Chaucerian poetry will be examined. In conclusion, I will consider the points of intersection between Popean humour and the poetic / political design of the eighteenth-century poem

Keywords

"MERIT WINS THE SOUL": ALEXANDER POPE'S HUMOROUS REJECTION OF MODERNISM IN THE TEMPLE OF FAME

Öz

Devrim öncesi Fransa’da Charles Perrault tarafından tartışmaya açılan antikler ve modernler tartışması, daha sonraları Jonathan Swift’in A Tale of a Tub’a (1704) önsöz olarak yazdığı The Battle of Books isimli kısa eserinde yeniden tartışmaya açılmıştır. Swift’in Fransa’da filizlenmiş olan ve antiklerin modernlere üstün mü geldiği, yoksa modernlerin William Temple’ın ifadesiyle “devlerin omuzlarında yükselen cüceler” mi oldukları ekseninde yeşermiş olan bu tartışmayı eserlerine taşımış olması, asıl tartışmaya İngilizler tarafından bir yorum getirilmesinin önünü açmıştır. Bu yoruma önemli ölçüde katkıda bulunmuş olan Alexander Pope ise on sekizinci yüzyıl entelektüelinin klasikleri ve antik edebi modelleri alımlayışının aynı dönem içerisinde edebiyatta gelişen modernist hattı nasıl kırdığı üzerine durmuştur. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma Pope’un pek nadiren ele alınan ve Chaucer’ın House of Fame’inin yeniden yazımı olan bir eserini ele alarak, onun bu modernist görüşü ne biçimlerde reddettiğini ele almayı amaçlamaktadır. O nedenle, Pope’un The Temple of Fame isimli eserinde mizahı modernist görüşü çürütmek için bir karşı-argüman geliştirme aracı olarak kullandığını ifade ederek, onun klasik edebi “erdem” anlayışını Chaucer’ın öncü şiirsel modelinin taklidi ya da yeniden yazımı noktasında bulduğu savunulacaktır. Sonuç olarak, Pope’un mizah anlayışı ile on sekizinci yüzyıl şiirinin poetik / politik tasarımının ne ölçüde birbirleriyle uyuştuğu noktasına değinilecektir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Kaynakça

ABEL, John F.; “The Personal Relationship of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift as Revealed by Their Mutual Correspondence.” Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Loyola University, 1949.
ATKINS, G.; Douglas; Swift’s Satires on Modernism: Battlegrounds of Reading and Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
BARNARD, John; “Introduction,” Alexander Pope: The Critical Heritage, edited by John Barnard, Routledge, 2005, pp. 1-33.
BOWDEN, Betsy; Chaucer Aloud: The Varieties of Textual Interpretation, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.
BOND, Richmond P.; “Some Eighteenth-Century Chaucer Allusions” Studies in Philology, vol.25, no.3, 1928, pp.316-399.
BURNS, Edward; Restoration Comedy: Crises of Desire and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, 1987.
COHEN, Ralph; “The Augustan Mode in English Poetry” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 1, no.1, 1967, pp. 3-32.
DE MAN, Paul; “Literary History and Literary Modernity” Daedalus, vol. 99, no.2, 1970, pp. 384-404.

DRYDEN, John; The Preface to The Fables, edited by W.H. Williams, Cambridge University Press, 1912.
ELDREDGE, Laurence; “Chaucer’s “Hous of Fame” and The Via Moderna” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 71, no.1, 1970, pp. 105-119.
HIGHET, Gilbert; The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. Oxford University Press, 2015.
HUME, David; “Of the Standard of Taste,” English Essays from Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay, edited by C.W.Eliott. P.F.Collier & Son, 1910.
HUTCHEON, Linda; A Theory of Adaptation, Routledge, 2006.
JOHNSON, Samuel; The Lives of the Poets: A Selection, edited by Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University Press, 2009.
KNIGHT, G. Wilson; The Poetry of Alexander Pope: Laureate of Peace, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955.
LEVINE, Joseph M.; Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age. Cornell University Press, 1991.
LYNCH, Kathryn L.; Chaucer’s Philosophical Vision. D.S. Brewer, 2000.
MACINTYRE, Alasdair; After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
NOKES, David; “Pope’s Chaucer,” The Review of English Studies, vol. 27, no.106, 1976, pp. 180-182.
NUSSBAUM, M.C.; Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Harvard University Press, 2011.
ORRERY, John Boyle; “Remarks on the Life and Writing of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin. In a Series of Letters from John Earl of Orrery to his Son, the Honourable Hamilton Boyle, 1752,” Jonathan Swift: The Critical Heritage, edited by Kathleen Williams, Routledge, 2002, pp. 115-131.
PARKIN, Rebecca Price; “The Quality of Alexander Pope’s Humour,” College English, vol. 14, no.4, 1953, pp. 197-202.
PATEY, Douglas Lane; “Ancients and Moderns,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol.4: The Eighteenth Century, edited by H.B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson. Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 32-75.
---. “The institution of criticism in the eighteenth-century,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol.4: The Eighteenth Century, edited by H.B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson. Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 3-31.
PECK, Russell A.; “Chaucer and the Nominalist Questions,” Speculum vol. 53, 1978, pp.145-60.
POPE, Alexander; Essay on Criticism, edited by John Churton Collins, Macmillan and Co., 1896.
---.; The Art of Sinking in Poetry: Martinus Scriblerius’ Peri Bathous. Russell & Russell, 1968.
---.; The Rape of The Lock, edited by Cynthia Wall. Bedford Books, 1998.
---.; The Temple of Fame: A Vision. 2nd ed. Bernard Lintott, 1715.
SABOR, Peter; “Medieval revival and the Gothic,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol.4: The Eighteenth Century, edited by H.B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson. Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 470-489.
SAMBROOK, James; “Poetry, 1660-1740,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol.4: The Eighteenth Century, edited by H.B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson. Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 75-117.
SOWERBY, Robin; The Augustan Art of Poetry: Augustan Translation of the Classics, Oxford University Press, 2006.
SWIFT, Jonathan; The Battle of the books, with selections from the literature of the Phalaris controversy, Chatto and Windus, 1908.
TEMPLE, William; Upon the gardens of Epicurus, with other 17th century garden essays, Chatto and Windus, 1908.
QUNITERO, Ruben; “Pope and Augustan Verse Satire,” A Companion to Satire, edited by Ruben Quintero Blackwell, 2007, pp. 212-232.
WHATELY, Thomas; Observations on Modern Gardening: An Eighteenth-Century Study of the English Landscape Garden. The Boydell Press, 2016.
ZETZEL, James E.G.; “Re-Creating the Canon: Augustan Poetry and the Alexandrian Past,” Critical Inquiry, vol.10, no.1, 1983, pp. 83-105.
ZIMPFER, Nathalie; “The Poïesis of Non-Modern Modernity: Swift’s Battle of the Books,” Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, HS3, 2013, pp. 157-70.

Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil

İngilizce

Konular

-

Bölüm

Araştırma Makalesi

Yazarlar

Selena Özbaş ^*
0000-0002-7710-9296
Türkiye

Yayımlanma Tarihi

29 Haziran 2021

Gönderilme Tarihi

12 Kasım 2020

Kabul Tarihi

1 Haziran 2021

Yayımlandığı Sayı

Yıl 2021 Cilt: 45 Sayı: 1

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA27HL55KG

Kaynak Göster

RIS / Bibtex

APA

Özbaş, S. (2021). “MERIT WINS THE SOUL”: ALEXANDER POPE’S HUMOROUS REJECTION OF MODERNISM IN THE TEMPLE OF FAME. Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 45(1), 241-256. https://izlik.org/JA27HL55KG