SOURCE: “The ‘New World’ of Augustan Humanism: An Essay on Criticism (1711), An Essay on Man (1733-4),” in Alexander Pope, Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp. 46-93.

In the following excerpt, Brown analyzes the logic of An Essay on Man, maintaining that the poem incoherently addresses the often contradictory ideological values of capitalism and Christianity.

We now turn to Pope's two major theoretical treatises, one aesthetic, the other philosophical. An Essay on Criticism was published in 1711, within two years of Windsor-Forest (1713) and the first version of The Rape of the Lock (1712). An Essay on Man was written between 1730 and 1734 and belongs to the last decade of Pope's poetic production. Our reading of Pope's theoretical works will thus require a chronological leap that parallels a division in Pope's poetic career between the early period of generic variety—the period represented by the first collected volume of Pope's Works in 1717—and the late period...