13
votes
Accepted
What did Alexander Pope mean by "Expletives their feeble Aid do join"?
Pope is using the word ‘expletive’ in this sense:
A word or phrase that fills out a sentence or metrical line without adding anything to the sense; a word or phrase serving as a grammatical place-...
- 53.5k
8
votes
Accepted
Vultures and wives? What does this expression mean?
Pope uses “grateful” in this sense:
grateful, adj., 1. Pleasing to the mind or the senses, agreeable, acceptable, welcome.
Oxford English Dictionary.
and not in the more usual sense of “feeling ...
- 53.5k
7
votes
What did Pope intend to say by "Whatever is, is right"?
In the passage
The first paragraph here proposes (through a somewhat rhetorical line of questioning) that novels are meant to help provide a moral model for society:
they show us models so that we ...
- 4,732
5
votes
Accepted
Meaning and addressees of Hector's threats
Hector is indeed threatening his own men. These lines are a translation of Iliad XV.343–351.
ὄφρ᾽ οἳ τοὺς ἐνάριζον ἀπ᾽ ἔντεα, τόφρα δ᾽ Ἀχαιοὶ
τάφρῳ καὶ σκολόπεσσιν ἐνιπλήξαντες ὀρυκτῇ
ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα ...
- 53.5k
5
votes
Meaning and addressees of Hector's threats
Hector is urging his men to attack the Greek ships bravely, but without plundering them afterwards. He says:
If you run away from the battle, or if you lag behind so that you’re not on its front ...
- 21.8k
3
votes
What did Pope intend to say by "Whatever is, is right"?
This was a very popular idea of 17th and 18th centuries philosophy. In a very broad stroke, with gross simplification: everything is a manifestation of the single underlying Idea, and since the Idea ...
- 1,002
3
votes
Accepted
What did Alexander Pope mean by "That reason, passion, answer one great aim"?
An Essay On Man is a philosophical and theological work in which Pope seeks to explore the relationship of God to Man. Most specifically it is a warning that mankind is not the centre of all things ...
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2
votes
Accepted
Why did Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man" refer to itself as a "false mirror"?
Pope is claiming that his earlier works, such as The Rape of the Lock or The Dunciad, were not as meaningful or true as Essay on Man. Being mock-heroic or satirical in tone, those poems were concerned ...
- 21.8k
2
votes
What did Alexander Pope mean by "That reason, passion, answer one great aim"?
I would like to add to Matt's answer. The line
whatever is, is right;
should be interpreted as: God has a plan for this world, and if something happens that looks wrong, it's only because we don't ...
- 11.6k
2
votes
What did Alexander Pope mean by "Expletives their feeble Aid do join"?
Pope is talking about how most people just care about how a poem sounds ("Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear") and not what it actually says ("Not mend their minds"). In particular he notes ...
- 4,732
2
votes
What's Samuel Johnson truly saying about Dryden and Pope?
This is a paraphrase of the Johnson's text quoted in the question. It is clear that Johnson sees differences between the two poets, thinking the one is capable of better work, but not consistently so,...
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2
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What did Pope intend to say by "Whatever is, is right"?
Auden Young's answer discusses the first occurrence of the expression "Whatever is, is right" in Alexander Pope's Essay on Man but overlooks that the other instances.
Pope uses the ...
- 44k
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