SOURCE: "'Gracing These Ribalds': The Play of Difference in Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot", in Reading Deconstruction/Deconstructive Reading, University Press of Kentucky, 1983, pp. 118-35.

In the essay below, Atkins offers a deconstructionist reading of Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, focusing on the relation of the self to the other.

An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is normally read as Pope's defense of himself and justification of his satire, as—in other words—his apologia pro satura sua. In the prose "Advertisement" that precedes the poem, Pope describes his aim, in fact, in legal terms as an indictment, establishing an adversarial situation and pitting himself and his word against certain others, their changes, and their "truth": "This Paper is a Sort of Bill of Complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several Occasions offer'd. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleas'd some...