Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is a satire in poetic form written by Alexander Pope and addressed to his friend John Arbuthnot, a physician. It was first published in 1735 and composed in 1734, when Pope learned that Arbuthnot was dying. Pope described it as a memorial of their friendship.[1] It has been called[2] Pope's "most directly autobiographical work", in which he defends his practice in the genre of satire and attacks those who had been his opponents and rivals throughout his career.[3]
Both in composition and in publication, the poem had a chequered history. In its
Addressee
Composition
According to Pope, the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot was a satire "written piecemeal many years, and which I have now made haste to put together". The poem was completed by 3 September, when Pope wrote to Arbuthnot describing the poem as "the best Memorial that I can leave, both of my Friendship to you, & of my own Character being such as you need not be ashamd of that Friendship".[7]
Publishing history
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot has a "tangled" publishing history. The poem was first published as a
Analysis
The poem includes character sketches of "Atticus" (Joseph Addison) and "Sporus" (John Hervey). Addison is presented as having great talent that is diminished by fear and jealousy; Hervey is sexually perverse, malicious, and both absurd and dangerous.[9] Pope marks the virulence of the "Sporus" attack by having Arbuthnot exclaim "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" in reference to the form of torture called the breaking wheel.[10] By emphasizing friendship, Pope counters his image as "an envious and malicious monster" whose "satire springs from a being devoid of all natural affections and lacking a heart."[11] It was an "efficient and authoritative revenge":[12] in this poem and others of the 1730s, Pope presents himself as writing satire not out of ego or misanthropy, but to serve impersonal virtue.[13]
Although rejected by a critic contemporary with Pope as a "mere lampoon",[14] Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot has been described as one of Pope's "most striking achievements, a work of authentic power, both tragic and comic, as well as great formal ingenuity, despite the near-chaos from which it emerged."[15]
References
- ^ Pat Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 110.
- ^ Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, p. 110.
- ^ Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, p. 110.
- ^ Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, p. 110.
- ^ The Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume 1.[citation needed]
- ^ Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, p. 110; Baines, The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope (Routledge, 2000), p. 37.
- ^ Rogers, The Pope Encyclopedia, p. 110, citing Pope's Correspondence 3: 416–17, 423, 428, 431.
- ^ Rogers, The Pope Encyclopedia, p. 110.
- ^ Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, p. 111.
- ^ Dennis Todd, Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of Self in Eighteenth-Century England (University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 245.
- ^ Todd, Imagining Monsters, p. 247.
- ^ Baines, The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope, p. 36.
- ^ Todd, Imagining Monsters, p. 247.
- ^ John Barnard, Alexander Pope: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1973), p. 16.
- ^ Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, p. 111.