ESSAY ON CRITICISM BY ALEXANDER POPE

A critic's sole concern with conceit and language

CONCEIT
A conceit in literature is a figure of speech that links together two utterly
different concepts through the clever use of similes and metaphors. This
unlikely yet intellectually imaginative comparison is used to cause surprise in
the reader and force him to take a new view about an object and its complexity.
The definition of conceit has changed over time. In the beginning of the
Renaissance it referred to any expression of wit but it later gained negative
connotations and was used to describe an overly exaggerated comparison.
Nowadays, it just refers to an extended metaphor.
In literature, there are two types of conceit: the Petrarchan conceit, which only
applies to love poetry and seeks to compare the beloved to extreme
experiences or concepts in order to demonstrate the intensity of the feeling;
and the Metaphysical conceit, one of the trademarks of poets such as John
Donne, Andrew Marvell or Abraham Cowley, popular during the 17 th century
and which explores similarities within broadly different objects.
ALEXANDER POPE
In An Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope attacks the Metaphysical poets and
their use of conceit. Conceit, he wrote to William Walsh in 1706, is to Nature
what Paint is to Beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would
improve. Following that train of thought, Pope wrote about Richard Crashaw
that the coloring of his verses entertained the sight but that the lines and life of
the picture were not to be inspected narrowly. These analogies between poets
and painters helped Pope express his repudiation of affectation and excessive
ornament, flaws that he saw in the Metaphysical School. The pursue of glaring
thoughts and deceits without design, method or justness, wrote poet William
Walsh to Pope in 1706, is a blameworthy fondness that both authors and critics
should avoid. This fixation not only with deceit but with language, was without
a doubt a reminiscence of Dryden, who affirmed that if the design of a poem
was vicious the cost of coloring it was that of an ugly woman in a rich habit set
out with jewels. In Essay, Pope clearly states his repudiation for those who only
cared about language or style and do not even question the sense beneath this
false and pompous eloquence. On the other hand, he praises true expression
and compares it to a sun that gilds all objects but does not alter the thought.