Alexander Pope is the man.

Confession: I have taken many English classes here at UVU and this is the first time I’ve really sat down and read anything by Alexander Pope. The introduction says he is considered to be one of the greatest poets of all time, so I was glad to finally familiarize myself with him a bit. I really enjoyed reading “An Essay on Criticism”. I thought it was brilliant and realized when I finished reading it that I had underlined more than half of the poem.

The irony of the poem is that it is a criticism of criticism. By satirizing the swiftness with which literary critics pass judgment on a literary work, Pope sheds light on the hypocrisy of those who “lose their common sense” “In search of wit” (line 28). In other words, many critics are so focused on finding something to criticize that they end up missing the author’s point entirely. Sadly, the real meaning of a literary work often gets trampled in the mad rush of critics that come swarming in, eager to impart their supposed “wisdom” and sentence someone else’s thoughts to either success or failure.

I remember our class discussion on Astrophill and Stella about criticism. Someone made the comment that we have been taught to criticize and deconstruct literature to the point where it becomes difficult to simply read a poem, for example, and allow ourselves to feel a pure emotion without automatically questioning the author’s motives, his/her possible use of rhetorical strategies, what something may or may not be symbolic of, etc. “So by false learning is good sense defaced. / Some are bewildered in the maze of schools” (25, 26). I do not think that it is wrong to criticize literature; on the contrary I think it is a very beneficial skill to acquire for many reasons. I do, however, believe that too much of something (anything, really) can be negative, as is the case with literary criticism. When used with tact, it can help us as readers to gain more perspective, but the moment that criticism is superfluously used is the moment that the want for criticism overshadows the honest desire to understand literature. It’s kind of like an oxymoron. Usually, the harder people try to achieve something, the more likely they are to arrive at success. The irony of criticism seems to be that, many times, the harder people try to make meaning of a work of art or literature, the more likely they are to overanalyze it, thus pushing them further away from true understanding.