Alexander Pope: World and Word
(OUP, 1998)
edited by Howard Erskine-Hill

	Alexander Pope, World and Word represents the belated fruition of the 1994
British Academy Symposium on Alexander Pope. This collection of essays
retains something of the feel of a symposium, being a tantalisingly
imperfect confluence of common concerns, critical imperatives, and
theoretical anxieties. The book is well worth purchasing if only for its
introduction, which offers a superb historically discursive bibliography of
twentieth-century Pope criticism. Erskine-Hill is far too honest a critic to
pretend to be objective in his survey, but scrupulousness and courtesy
inform an invaluable map of critical perspectives.

	The professed aim of World and Word is to bridge the gap between dominant
historicised readings and old-fashioned close critical and textual
approaches: 'to bring contextual knowledge to bear upon verbal artistry' in
Erskine-Hill's own words (p. 25). Unfortunately the book, considered as a
whole, cannot entirely be said to fulfil this admirable desideratum. Hester
Jones' chapter on friendship in Pope's Homer is carefully constructed, and
irrefutable on its own terms. David Nokes' essay on Gay is (predictably) a
plausible piece of biographical detective work, while Thomas Keymer's
excellent essay on Pope and Richardson is concerned with intertextual
influences and affinities rather than with the detailed questions of formal
technique implied by the book's introductory manifesto. Julian Ferraro, on
the other hand, sticks very closely to the 'world and word' agenda in his
essay on Pope's revision of the Epistles, quoting this subtitle rather too
anxiously and intrusively at times.

	In many ways the book is dominated by Claude Rawson's lengthy discussion of
Pope's epic idiom. Rawson's own familiar yet magisterial prose assists an
impressive argument which demands that readers take the perverse ambitions
of mock-heroic seriously: '…the characteristic impulse is not to circumvent
but to transcend the parody' (p. 108).

	The highest praise, however, belongs to Erskine-Hill's own contribution, an
essay which triumphantly vindicates its author's long standing concern with
Jacobitism. This essay represents the most sophisticated and enlightening
treatment that this reviewer has seen of the complex versatility of
Jacobitism as a mode of resistance to whiggocratic government. Even more
impressively, it shows how issues of tyranny and just authority define and
are defined by the construction of Pope's heroic couplet. This is, above
all, an  essay which exemplifies the most fruitful interpenetration of text
and context.

	A final caveat must concern the title. World and Word is an unlovely and
unPopeian piece of alliterative assonance that makes this title hard to
remember or recommend. In any case, 'world' ultimately crowds out 'word' in
terms of the balance of material offered. However, it seems somewhat carping
to complain about the thwarted ambitions of a work of so much critical
intelligence and imagination. If this collection is not quite the book it
wants to be, it contains several books that ought to be. In terms of its
ability to re-energise and re-direct debate, it deserves the highest
recommendation.



Conrad Brunstrom
Dept of English
National University of Ireland, Maynooth.






Dr Conrad Brunstrom
Dept of English
University of Ireland Maynooth
Maynooth,
Co. Kildare
Republic of Ireland
TEL + 708 3543
TEL + 628 9676