Pope, Print, and Meaning

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 2001 - 257 pages
Throughout his life, Pope was fascinated by print. He loved its elements: dropped heads, italics, small capitals; fine paper and good ink; headpieces, tailpieces, initials, and plates. And he loved playing games with publication: anonymity, pseudonymity, false imprints, fake title-pages, advertisements, special editions, and variant texts.This is the first study to take Pope's experiments in print as a guide to interpretation. Each chapter is devoted to a particular book or text and focuses on how Pope expresses meaning through print. The Rape of the Lock, Dunciad Variorum, Essay on Man, early imitations of Horace, and Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot are read through their illustrations, annotations, parallel texts, title-pages, and revisions. Independent chapters are devoted to Pope's Works of 1717 and 1735-6, discussing his self-presentation and his relation to his readers. He emerges from the study as a figure marginalized socially, politically, and sexually, an author who gambles with his private life in confronting his opponents.
 

Contents

List of Illustrations
8
From Miscellany Endpiece to Illustrated
14
Building a Monument
46
The Limits of Dialogue
82
Title Pages
107
Textual Variation Sexuality
175
Popes Notes
209
Works Cited
242
Index
251
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2001)

James McLaverty is at Senior Lecturer in English at Keele University.

Bibliographic information