Living on the margin: Alexander Pope and the rural ideal.(Critical essay) From: Studies in the Literary Imagination | Date: March 22, 2005| Author: Kairoff, Claudia Thomas | COPYRIGHT 2005 Georgia State University Department of English. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Alexander Pope's rural pronouncements have recently attracted negative criticism from two quite different perspectives. Malcolm Kelsall condemns Pope's hypocrisy in celebrating the virtues and taste of landowners who were almost indistinguishable, except that Pope approved their politics, from those whose buildings and landscapes the poet deplored (64-66, 74-75). Kelsall also sneers at Pope's attempt, at best naive, "to create within the imaginative world of his villa at Twickenham...