Structured as an essay in rhyming verse, it offers advice to the aspiring critic while satirizing amateurish criticism and poetry. The famous passage beginning "A little learning is a dangerous thing" advises would-be critics to learn their field in depth, warning that the arts demand much longer and more arduous study than beginners expect. The passage can also be read as a warning against shallow learning in general. Published in , when Alexander Pope was just 23, the "Essay" brought its author fame and notoriety while he was still a young poet himself.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts, While from the bounded level of our mind, Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,. But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise New, distant scenes of endless science rise! So pleased at first, the towering Alps we try, Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; The eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;. But those attained, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthened way, The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem. The Poem Aloud — Listen to an audiobook of Pope's "Essay on Criticism" the "A little learning" passage starts at The Poet's Life — Read a biography of Alexander Pope at the Poetry Foundation. More on Pope's Life — A summary of Pope's life and work at Poets. Pope at the British Library — More resources and articles on the poet. Ode on Solitude. Instant downloads of all LitChart PDFs including From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing. LitCharts Teacher Editions.

Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Though, there are some specific rules that he ascribes to criticism. The critic, he says, must examine an author as not being familiar with his own capacities but being aware of all aspects of the author. He further suggests that criticism must have a moral sensibility, modesty and caution. Pope warns critics that they avoid bookish knowledge as it results in extravagant language. Poetry and criticism, he suggests, are two branches of art. He keeps them in moral and theological domain too. He also suggests that a poet ought to have critical faculties too so that the creative process is carried out in a balanced and controlled way. His emphasis is on the following nature, the act that relates to wit and judgment which has an overlapping relation as do poetry and criticism.

His advice is that nature should be the standard to be followed before one makes a judgment. He suggests, like all neo-classical critics and writers that nature should become the inspiration to create art. It is pride that causes subjectivity, leads to individualism, and mass balance of wit and judgment. Pope, consequently, attempts to synthesize classical literary traditions with nature. He says that criticism in the ancient Greece one achieved a high status which now has declined. A critic task was then to judge the art meticulously, to appreciate, but now that has been replaced by attacks on poets.

He advises both critic and poet to refrain from any biases and to follow ancient rules. Pope praises Horace as a supreme critic in the literary tradition. Others who are praiseworthy to Pope are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Petronius, Quintilian, and Longinus. He considers them true representatives of the classical tradition.

It offers a sort of master-class not only in doing criticism but in being a critic:addressed to those — it could be anyone — who would rise above scandal,envy, politics and pride to true judgement, it leads the reader through a qualifying course. At the end, one does not become a professional critic —the association with hired writing would have been a contaminating one for Pope — but an educated judge of important critical matters. The next six lines ring the changes on the differences to be weighed in deciding the question:. The simple opposition we began with develops into a more complex suggestion that more unqualified people are likely to set up for critic than for poet, and that such a proliferation is serious.

The critical function may well depend on a poetic function: this is after all an essay on criticism delivered in verse, and thus acting also as poetry and offering itself for criticism. Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope. Pope, however, decided during the revision of the work for the Works to divide the poem into three sections, with numbered sub-sections summarizing each segment of argument. This impluse towards order is itself illustrative of tensions between creative and critical faculties, an apparent casualness of expression being given rigour by a prose skeleton. The three sections are not equally balanced, but offer something like the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis of logical argumentation — something which exceeds the positive-negative opposition suggested by the couplet format.

The first section 1— establishes the basic possibilities for critical judgement;the second — elaborates the factors which hinder such judgement;and the third — celebrates the elements which make up true critical behaviour. Art should be derived from Nature, should seek to replicate Nature, and can be tested against the unaltering standard of Nature, which thus includes Reason and Truth as reflections of the mind of the original poet-creator, God. In a fallen universe, however, apprehension of Nature requires assistance: internal gifts alone do not suffice. But Pope stood by the essential point that Wit itself could be a form of Judgment and insisted that though the marriage between these qualities might be strained, no divorce was possible.

In the golden age of Greece 92— , Criticism identified these Rules of Nature in early poetry and taught their use to aspiring poets. Pope contrasts this with the activities of critics in the modern world, where often criticism is actively hostile to poetry, or has become an end in itself — Virgil the poet becomes a sort of critical commentary on the original source poet of Western literature,Homer. As well as the prescriptions of Aristotelian poetics,Pope draws on the ancient treatise ascribed to Longinus and known as On the Sublime [12]. Following this ringing prayer for the possibility of reestablishing a critical art based on poetry, Part II elaborates all the human psychological causes which inhibit such a project: pride, envy,sectarianism, a love of some favourite device at the expense of overall design.

The ideal critic will reflect the creative mind, and will seek to understand the whole work rather than concentrate on minute infractions of critical laws:. A perfect Judge will read each Work of Wit With the same Spirit that its Author writ, Survey the Whole, nor seek slight Faults to find, Where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the Mind;. Most critics and poets err by having a fatal predisposition towards some partial aspect of poetry: ornament, conceit, style, or metre, which they use as an inflexible test of far more subtle creations. Pope aims for akind of poetry which is recognisable and accessible in its entirety:.

Pope performs and illustrates a series of poetic clichés — the use of open vowels, monosyllabic lines, and cheap rhymes:. These gaffes are contrasted with more positive kinds of imitative effect:. Again, this functions both as poetic instance and as critical test, working examples for both classes of writer. After a long series of satiric vignettes of false critics, who merely parrot the popular opinion, or change their minds all the time, or flatter aristocratic versifiers, or criticise poets rather than poetry , Pope again switches attention to educated readers, encouraging or cajoling them towards staunchly independent and generous judgment within what is described as an increasingly fraught cultural context, threatened with decay and critical warfare — If the first parts of An Essay on Criticism outline a positive classical past and troubled modern present, Part III seeks some sort of resolved position whereby the virtues of one age can be maintained during the squabbles of the other.

Thereafter, Pope has two things to say. The other is to insinuate an answer. These pairs include and encapsulate all the precepts recommended in the body of the poem. Pope does however cite two earlier verse essays by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, and Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon [13] before paying tribute to his own early critical mentor, William Walsh, who had died in [9]. It is a kind of leading from the front, or tuition by example, as recommended and practised by the poem. From an apparently secondary,even negative, position writing on criticism, which the poem sees as secondary to poetry , the poem ends up founding criticism on poetry, and deriving poetry from the ideal critic.

It is a poem profuse with images, comparisons and similes. Much ofthe imagery is military or political, indicating something of the social role as legislator in the universal empire of poetry the critic is expected toadopt; we are also reminded of the decay of empires, and the potentialdecay of cultures there is something of The Dunciad in the poem. and Joukovsky, N. Categories: Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Poetry. You must be logged in to post a comment. Share this: Facebook WhatsApp Twitter Email Pocket LinkedIn Reddit Tumblr Pinterest Telegram More Print Skype. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Loading Comments

He himself sets forth his ideas as a descendant of Renaissance thinkers who looked back to the classical writers as their ideals. What Pope, as a critic and poet, endeavours in his essay is to trace the background of true criticism, to show its overlapping relation with poetry, while both being based on the standard of nature and wit. Thereafter, Pope has two things to say. Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope. Pope contends in the poem's opening couplets that bad criticism does greater harm than bad writing:.

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