an essay on criticism genre

An Essay on Criticism Summary & Analysis by Alexander Pope

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
Poetic Devices
Vocabulary & References
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
Line-by-Line Explanations

Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" seeks to lay down rules of good taste in poetry criticism, and in poetry itself. 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 1711, when Alexander Pope was just 23, the "Essay" brought its author fame and notoriety while he was still a young poet himself.

Read the full text of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

The Full Text of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

1 A little learning is a dangerous thing;

2 Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

3 There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

4 And drinking largely sobers us again.

5 Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

6 In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,

7 While from the bounded level of our mind,

8 Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

9 But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise

10 New, distant scenes of endless science rise!

11 So pleased at first, the towering Alps we try,

12 Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

13 The eternal snows appear already past,

14 And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

15 But those attained, we tremble to survey

16 The growing labours of the lengthened way,

17 The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,

18 Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

“From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Summary

“from an essay on criticism: a little learning is a dangerous thing” themes.

Shallow Learning vs. Deep Understanding

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

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!

Lines 11-14

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;

Lines 15-18

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!

“From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Symbols

The Mountains/Alps

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“From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

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Extended Metaphor

“from an essay on criticism: a little learning is a dangerous thing” vocabulary.

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.

A little learning
Pierian spring
Bounded level
Short views
The lengthened way
See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

Rhyme scheme, “from an essay on criticism: a little learning is a dangerous thing” speaker, “from an essay on criticism: a little learning is a dangerous thing” setting, literary and historical context of “from an essay on criticism: a little learning is a dangerous thing”, more “from an essay on criticism: a little learning is a dangerous thing” resources, external resources.

The Poem Aloud — Listen to an audiobook of Pope's "Essay on Criticism" (the "A little learning" passage starts at 12:57).

The Poet's Life — Read a biography of Alexander Pope at the Poetry Foundation.

"Alexander Pope: Rediscovering a Genius" — Watch a BBC documentary on Alexander Pope.

More on Pope's Life — A summary of Pope's life and work at Poets.org.

Pope at the British Library — More resources and articles on the poet.

LitCharts on Other Poems by Alexander Pope

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Analysis of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism

Analysis of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 8, 2020 • ( 1 )

An Essay on Criticism (1711) was Pope’s first independent work, published anonymously through an obscure bookseller [12–13]. Its implicit claim to authority is not based on a lifetime’s creative work or a prestigious commission but, riskily, on the skill and argument of the poem alone. 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.

But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ Offence, To tire our Patience, than mislead our Sense: Some few in that, but Numbers err in this, Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss; A Fool might once himself alone expose, Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose.

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. Pope’s typographically-emphasised oppositions between poetry and criticism, verse and prose,patience and sense, develop through the passage into a wider account of the problem than first proposed: the even-handed balance of the couplets extends beyond a simple contrast. Nonetheless, though Pope’s oppositions divide, they also keep within a single framework different categories of writing: Pope often seems to be addressing poets as much as critics. 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. Its blurring of categories which might otherwise be seen as fundamentally distinct, and its often slippery transitions from area to area, are part of the poem’s comprehensive,educative character.

Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope

Addison, who considered the poem ‘a Master-piece’, declared that its tone was conversational and its lack of order was not problematic: ‘The Observations follow one another like those in Horace’s Art of Poetry, without that Methodical Regularity which would have been requisite in a Prose Author’ (Barnard 1973: 78). Pope, however, decided during the revision of the work for the 1736 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 (1–200) establishes the basic possibilities for critical judgement;the second (201–559) elaborates the factors which hinder such judgement;and the third (560–744) celebrates the elements which make up true critical behaviour.

Part One seems to begin by setting poetic genius and critical taste against each other, while at the same time limiting the operation of teaching to those ‘who have written well ’ ( EC, 11–18). The poem immediately stakes an implicit claim for the poet to be included in the category of those who can ‘write well’ by providing a flamboyant example of poetic skill in the increasingly satiric portrayal of the process by which failed writers become critics: ‘Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,/Or with a Rival’s, or an Eunuch ’s spite’ ( EC, 29–30). At the bottom of the heap are ‘half-learn’d Witlings, num’rous in our Isle’, pictured as insects in an early example of Pope’s favourite image of teeming, writerly promiscuity (36–45). Pope then turns his attention back to the reader,conspicuously differentiated from this satiric extreme: ‘ you who seek to give and merit Fame’ (the combination of giving and meriting reputation again links criticism with creativity). The would-be critic, thus selected, is advised to criticise himself first of all, examining his limits and talents and keeping to the bounds of what he knows (46-67); this leads him to the most major of Pope’s abstract quantities within the poem (and within his thought in general): Nature.

First follow NATURE, and your Judgment frame By her just Standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchang’d, and Universal Light, Life, Force, and Beauty, must to all impart, At once the Source, and End, and Te s t of Art.

( EC, 68–73)

Dennis complained that Pope should have specified ‘what he means by Nature, and what it is to write or to judge according to Nature’ ( TE I: 219),and modern analyses have the burden of Romantic deifications of Nature to discard: Pope’s Nature is certainly not some pantheistic, powerful nurturer, located outside social settings, as it would be for Wordsworth,though like the later poets Pope always characterises Nature as female,something to be quested for by male poets [172]. Nature would include all aspects of the created world, including the non-human, physical world, but the advice on following Nature immediately follows the advice to study one’s own internal ‘Nature’, and thus means something like an instinctively-recognised principle of ordering, derived from the original,timeless, cosmic ordering of God (the language of the lines implicitly aligns Nature with God; those that follow explicitly align it with the soul). 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.

Some, to whom Heav’n in Wit has been profuse, Want as much more, to turn it to its use; For Wit and Judgment often are at strife, Tho’ meant each other’s Aid, like Man and Wife.

( EC, 80–03)

Wit, the second of Pope’s abstract qualities, is here seamlessly conjoined with the discussion of Nature: for Pope, Wit means not merely quick verbal humour but something almost as important as Nature – a power of invention and perception not very different from what we would mean by intelligence or imagination. Early critics again seized on the first version of these lines (which Pope eventually altered to the reading given here) as evidence of Pope’s inability to make proper distinctions: he seems to suggest that a supply of Wit sometimes needs more Wit to manage it, and then goes on to replace this conundrum with a more familiar opposition between Wit (invention) and Judgment (correction). 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.

Nonetheless, some external prop to Wit was necessary, and Pope finds this in those ‘RULES’ of criticism derived from Nature:

Those RULES of old discover’d, not devis’d, Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d; Nature, like Liberty , is but restrain’d By the same Laws which first herself ordain’d.

( EC, 88–91)

Nature, as Godlike principle of order, is ‘discover’d’ to operate according to certain principles stated in critical treatises such as Aristotle’s Poetics or Horace’s Ars Poetica (or Pope’s Essay on Criticism ). In the golden age of Greece (92–103), 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 (114–17). Right judgement must separate itself out from such blind alleys by reading Homer: ‘ You then whose Judgment the right Course would steer’ ( EC, 118) can see yourself in the fable of ‘young Maro ’ (Virgil), who is pictured discovering to his amazement the perfect original equivalence between Homer, Nature, and the Rules (130–40). Virgil the poet becomes a sort of critical commentary on the original source poet of Western literature,Homer. With assurance bordering consciously on hyperbole, Pope can instruct us: ‘Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem;/To copy Nature is to copy Them ’ ( EC, 139–40).

Despite the potential for neat conclusion here, Pope has a rider to offer,and again it is one which could be addressed to poet or critic: ‘Some Beauties yet, no Precepts can declare,/For there’s a Happiness as well as Care ’ ( EC, 141–2). As well as the prescriptions of Aristotelian poetics,Pope draws on the ancient treatise ascribed to Longinus and known as On the Sublime [12]. Celebrating imaginative ‘flights’ rather than representation of nature, Longinus figures in Pope’s poem as a sort of paradox:

Great Wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to Faults true Criticks dare not mend; From vulgar Bounds with brave Disorder part, And snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art, Which, without passing thro’ the Judgment , gains The Heart, and all its End at once attains.

( EC, 152–7)

This occasional imaginative rapture, not predictable by rule, is an important concession, emphasised by careful typographic signalling of its paradoxical nature (‘ gloriously offend ’, and so on); but it is itself countered by the caution that ‘The Critick’ may ‘put his Laws in force’ if such licence is unjustifiably used. Pope here seems to align the ‘you’ in the audience with poet rather than critic, and in the final lines of the first section it is the classical ‘ Bards Triumphant ’ who remain unassailably immortal, leavingPope to pray for ‘some Spark of your Coelestial Fire’ ( EC, 195) to inspire his own efforts (as ‘The last, the meanest of your Sons’, EC, 196) to instruct criticism through poetry.

Following this ringing prayer for the possibility of reestablishing a critical art based on poetry, Part II (200-559) 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;

( EC, 233–6)

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:

True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest, Something, whose Truth convinc’d at Sight we find, That gives us back the Image of our Mind:

( EC, 296–300)

This is not to say that style alone will do, as Pope immediately makesplain (305–6): the music of poetry, the ornament of its ‘numbers’ or rhythm, is only worth having because ‘The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense ’ ( EC, 365). Pope performs and illustrates a series of poetic clichés – the use of open vowels, monosyllabic lines, and cheap rhymes:

Tho’ oft the Ear the open Vowels tire … ( EC , 345) And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line … ( EC , 347) Where-e’er you find the cooling Western Breeze, In the next Line, it whispers thro’ the Trees … ( EC, 350–1)

These gaffes are contrasted with more positive kinds of imitative effect:

Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows; But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore, The hoarse, rough Verse shou’d like the Torrent roar.

( EC, 366–9)

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 (384-473), 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 (474–525). But, acknowledging that even‘Noble minds’ will have some ‘Dregs … of Spleen and sow’r Disdain’ ( EC ,526–7), Pope advises the critic to ‘Discharge that Rage on more ProvokingCrimes,/Nor fear a Dearth in these Flagitious Times’ (EC, 528–9): obscenity and blasphemy are unpardonable and offer a kind of lightning conductor for critics to purify their own wit against some demonised object of scorn.

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. The opening seeks to instill the correct behaviour in the critic –not merely rules for written criticism, but, so to speak, for enacted criticism, a sort of ‘ Good Breeding ’ (EC, 576) which politely enforces without seeming to enforce:

LEARN then what MORALS Criticks ought to show, For ’tis but half a Judge’s Task , to Know. ’Tis not enough, Taste, Judgment, Learning, join; In all you speak, let Truth and Candor shine … Be silent always when you doubt your Sense; And speak, tho’ sure , with seeming Diffidence …Men must be taught as if you taught them not; And Things unknown propos’d as Things forgot:

( EC , 560–3, 566–7, 574–5)

This ideally-poised man of social grace cannot be universally successful: some poets, as some critics, are incorrigible and it is part of Pope’s education of the poet-critic to leave them well alone. Synthesis, if that is being offered in this final part, does not consist of gathering all writers into one tidy fold but in a careful discrimination of true wit from irredeemable ‘dulness’ (584–630).

Thereafter, Pope has two things to say. One is to set a challenge to contemporary culture by asking ‘where’s the Man’ who can unite all necessary humane and intellectual qualifications for the critic ( EC, 631–42), and be a sort of walking oxymoron, ‘Modestly bold, and humanly severe’ in his judgements. The other is to insinuate an answer. Pope offers deft characterisations of critics from Aristotle to Pope who achieve the necessary independence from extreme positions: Aristotle’s primary treatise is likened to an imaginative voyage into the land of Homer which becomes the source of legislative power; Horace is the poetic model for friendly conversational advice; Quintilian is a useful store of ‘the justest Rules, and clearest Method join’d’; Longinus is inspired by the Muses,who ‘bless their Critick with a Poet’s Fire’ ( EC, 676). These pairs include and encapsulate all the precepts recommended in the body of the poem. But the empire of good sense, Pope reminds us, fell apart after the fall of Rome,leaving nothing but monkish superstition, until the scholar Erasmus,always Pope’s model of an ecumenical humanist, reformed continental scholarship (693-696). Renaissance Italy shows a revival of arts, including criticism; France, ‘a Nation born to serve’ ( EC , 713) fossilised critical and poetic practice into unbending rules; Britain, on the other hand, ‘ Foreign Laws despis’d,/And kept unconquer’d, and unciviliz’d’ ( EC, 715–16) – a deftly ironic modulation of what appears to be a patriotic celebration intosomething more muted. 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 1708 [9]. Sheffield and Dillon were both poets who wrote criticism in verse, but Walsh was not a poet; in becoming the nearest modern embodiment of the ideal critic, his ‘poetic’ aspect becomes Pope himself, depicted as a mixture of moderated qualities which reminds us of the earlier ‘Where’s the man’ passage: he is quite possibly here,

Careless of Censure , nor too fond of Fame, Still pleas’d to praise, yet not afraid to blame, Averse alike to Flatter , or Offend, Not free from Faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

( EC , 741–44)

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.

Early criticism celebrated the way the poem seemed to master and exemplify its own stated ideals, just as Pope had said of Longinus that he ‘Is himself that great Sublime he draws’ ( EC, 680). It is a poem profuse with images, comparisons and similes. Johnson thought the longest example,that simile comparing student’s progress in learning with a traveller’s journey in Alps was ‘perhaps the best that English poetry can shew’: ‘The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself: it makes the foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy’ (Johnson 1905: 229–30). Many of the abstract precepts aremade visible in this way: private judgment is like one’s reliance on one’s(slightly unreliable) watch (9– 10); wit and judgment are like man and wife(82–3); critics are like pharmacists trying to be doctors (108–11). 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). Muchof it is religious, as with the most famous phrases from the poem (‘For Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’; ‘To err is human, to forgive, divine’), indicating the level of seriousness which Pope accords the matterof poetry. Much of it is sexual: creativity is a kind of manliness, wooing Nature, or the Muse, to ‘generate’ poetic issue, and false criticism, likeobscenity, derives from a kind of inner ‘impotence’. Patterns of suchimagery can be harnessed to ‘organic’ readings of the poem’s wholeness. But part of the life of the poem, underlying its surface statements andmetaphors, is its continual shifts of focus, its reminders of that which liesoutside the tidying power of couplets, its continual reinvention of the ‘you’opposed to the ‘they’ of false criticism, its progressive displacement of theopposition you thought you were looking at with another one whichrequires your attention.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Atkins, G. Douglas (1986): Quests of Difference: Reading Pope’s Poems (Lexing-ton: Kentucky State University Press) Barnard, John, ed. (1973): Pope: The Critical Heritage (London and Boston:Routledge and Kegan Paul) Bateson, F.W. and Joukovsky, N.A., eds, (1971): Alexander Pope: A Critical Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books) Brower, Reuben (1959): Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (Oxford: Clarendon Press) Brown, Laura (1985): Alexander Pope (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) Davis, Herbert ed. (1966): Pope: Poetical Works (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress Dixon, Peter, ed. (1972): Alexander Pope (London: G. Bell and Sons) Empson, William (1950): ‘Wit in the Essay on Criticism ’, Hudson Review, 2: 559–77 Erskine-Hill, Howard and Smith, Anne, eds (1979): The Art of Alexander Pope (London: Vision Press) Erskine-Hill, Howard (1982): ‘Alexander Pope: The Political Poet in his Time’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15: 123–148 Fairer, David (1984): Pope’s Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press) Fairer, David, ed. (1990): Pope: New Contexts (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf) Morris, David B. (1984): Alexander Pope: The Genius of Sense (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Nuttall, A.D. (1984): Pope’s ‘ Essay on Man’ (London: George Allen and Unwin) Rideout, Tania (1992): ‘The Reasoning Eye: Alexander Pope’s Typographic Vi-sion in the Essay on Man’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55:249–62 Rogers, Pat (1993a): Alexander Pope (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Rogers, Pat (1993b): Essay s on Pope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Savage, Roger (1988) ‘Antiquity as Nature: Pope’s Fable of “Young Maro”’, in An Essay on Criticism, in Nicholson (1988), 83–116 Schmitz, R. M. (1962): Pope’s Essay on Criticism 1709: A Study of the BodleianMS Text, with Facsimiles, Transcripts and Variants (St Louis: Washington University Press) Warren, Austin (1929): Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press) Woodman, Thomas (1989): Politeness and Poetry in the Age of Pope (Rutherford,New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press)

Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism": An Introduction

David cody , associate professor of english, hartwick college.

Victorian Web Home —> Some Pre-Victorian Authors —> Neoclassicism —> Alexander Pope ]

Pope's "Essay on Criticism" is a didactic poem in heroic couplets, begun, perhaps, as early as 1705, and published, anonymously, in 1711. The poetic essay was a relatively new genre, and the "Essay" itself was Pope's most ambitious work to that time. It was in part an attempt on Pope's part to identify and refine his own positions as poet and critic, and his response to an ongoing critical debate which centered on the question of whether poetry should be "natural" or written according to predetermined "artificial" rules inherited from the classical past.

The poem commences with a discussion of the rules of taste which ought to govern poetry, and which enable a critic to make sound critical judgements. In it Pope comments, too, upon the authority which ought properly to be accorded to the classical authors who dealt with the subject; and concludes (in an apparent attempt to reconcile the opinions of the advocates and opponents of rules) that the rules of the ancients are in fact identical with the rules of Nature: poetry and painting, that is, like religion and morality, actually reflect natural law. The "Essay on Criticism," then, is deliberately ambiguous: Pope seems, on the one hand, to admit that rules are necessary for the production of and criticism of poetry, but he also notes the existence of mysterious, apparently irrational qualities — "Nameless Graces," identified by terms such as "Happiness" and "Lucky Licence" — with which Nature is endowed, and which permit the true poetic genius, possessed of adequate "taste," to appear to transcend those same rules. The critic, of course, if he is to appreciate that genius, must possess similar gifts. True Art, in other words, imitates Nature, and Nature tolerates and indeed encourages felicitous irregularities which are in reality (because Nature and the physical universe are creations of God) aspects of the divine order of things which is eternally beyond human comprehension. Only God, the infinite intellect, the purely rational being, can appreciate the harmony of the universe, but the intelligent and educated critic can appreciate poetic harmonies which echo those in nature. Because his intellect and his reason are limited, however, and because his opinions are inevitably subjective, he finds it helpful or necessary to employ rules which are interpretations of the ancient principles of nature to guide him — though he should never be totally dependent upon them. We should note, in passing, that in "The Essay on Criticism" Pope is frequently concerned with "wit" — the word occurs once, on average, in every sixteen lines of the poem. What does he mean by it?

Pope then proceeds to discuss the laws by which a critic should be guided — insisting, as any good poet would, that critics exist to serve poets, not to attack them. He then provides, by way of example, instances of critics who had erred in one fashion or another. What, in Pope's opinion (here as elsewhere in his work) is the deadliest critical sin — a sin which is itself a reflection of a greater sin? All of his erring critics, each in their own way, betray the same fatal flaw.

The final section of the poem discusses the moral qualities and virtues inherent in the ideal critic, who is also the ideal man — and who, Pope laments, no longer exists in the degenerate world of the early eighteenth century.

Incorporated in the Victorian Web July 2000

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An Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope wrote An Essay on Criticism shortly after turning 21 years old in 1711. While remaining the speaker within his own poem Pope is able to present his true viewpoints on writing styles both as they are and how he feels they should be. While his poetic essay, written in heroic couplets, may not have obtained the same status as others of his time, it was certainly not because his writing was inferior (Bate). In fact, the broad background and comprehensive coverage within Pope’s work made it it one of the most influential critical essays yet to be written (Bate). It appears that through his writing Pope was reaching out not to the average reader, but instead to those who intend to be writers themselves as he represents himself as a critical perfectionist insisting on particular styles. Overall, his essay appears to best be understood by breaking it into three parts.

The scholar Walter Jackson Bate has explained the structure of the essay in the following way:

I. General qualities needed by the critic (1-200):

1. Awareness of his own limitations (46-67). 2. Knowledge of Nature in its general forms (68-87).

Nature defined (70-79).
Need of both wit and judgment to conceive it (80-87).

3. Imitation of the Ancients, and the use of rules (88-200).

Value of ancient poetry and criticism as models (88-103).
Censure of slavish imitation and codified rules (104-117).
Need to study the general aims and qualities of the Ancients (118-140).
Exceptions to the rules (141-168).

II. Particular laws for the critic (201-559): Digression on the need for humility (201-232):

1. Consider the work as a total unit (233-252). 2. Seek the author’s aim (253-266). 3. Examples of false critics who mistake the part for the whole (267-383).

The pedant who forgets the end and judges by rules (267-288).
The critic who judges by imagery and metaphor alone (289-304).
The rhetorician who judges by the pomp and colour of the diction (305-336).
Critics who judge by versification only (337-343).

Pope’s digression to exemplify “representative meter” (344-383). 4. Need for tolerance and for aloofness from extremes of fashion and personal mood (384-559).The fashionable critic: the cults, as ends in themselves, of the foreign (398-405), the new (406-423), and the esoteric (424-451).

Personal subjectivity and its pitfalls (452-559).

III. The ideal character of the critic (560-744):

1. Qualities needed: integrity (562-565), modesty (566-571), tact (572-577), courage (578-583). 2. Their opposites (584-630). 3. Concluding eulogy of ancient critics as models (643-744).

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An Overview of An Essay on Criticism

This post provides an overview of An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope.

AN OVERVIEW OF AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM

~BY ALEXANDER POPE

Alexander Pope was born in the year 1688, during the year of revolution in London. He in many respects was a unique figure of the English literary history. Firstly, because he was considered to be “the poet” of a great nation. He was an undisputed master in the narrow field of satiric and didactic verse during the early 18 th century. Pope’s influence completely dominated the poetry of his age. Many foreign writers looked to him and many English poets looked to him as their inspiration. Secondly, he was one of the writers who was a remarkable reflection of the spirit of the age he lived in. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Thirdly, he was the one and only important writer of the age who gave his whole life to letters. Unlike Swift, Addison and other writers of his age, Pope was someone who chose only literature as his profession. And fourthly, by the sheer force of his ambition he won his place, and held it, in spite of religious prejudice, and in the phase of physical and temperamental obstacles that would have discouraged a stronger man. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism” is perhaps the clearest statement of neoclassical principles in any language. Pope in this essay, not only gives the scope of good literary criticism, but he also redefines classical virtues in terms of ‘nature’ and ‘wit’ as necessary to both poetry and criticism. “An Essay on Criticism” was first published anonymously through an obscure book seller. Now, coming to Neoclassicism, it is basically a political and philosophical movement that developed during the age of enlightenment. One of the main characteristics of neoclassicism was decorum. But, the central tenant was the imitation of nature. This was to be achieved by artist modelling their work on the ancients.

Thus, the poets and dramatist were less interested in new forms than in inventing the new forms and were more into imitating the old ones of epic, eclogue, epigram, elegy, ode, satire, comedy, tragedy and so on. Indeed an awareness of the characteristics of each genre, and their relation to one another, was an integral feature of the neoclassicism. The neo-classicists were often termed as traditionalists, and they believed that literature was an art to be perfected by discipline, vigorous study and continuous practice. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

“An Essay on Criticism” is written in verse, in the form of Horace’s Ars Poetica. It sums up the art of poetry as first taught by Horace and then Boileau and the 18 th century classicists. Though written in Heroic couplets, we hardly consider this is a poem but rather a storehouse of critical maxims.

Alexander Pope in his “An Essay on Criticism” calls for a “return to nature” is complex. On the cosmic level Nature signifies the convenient order of the world and the universe, a hierarchy in which each entity has a proper assigned place of its own. Nature can refer to what is central, common and universal to all human experience, encompassing the spheres of morality and knowledge. It also signifies the rules of proper moral conduct as well as archetypal or representative patterns of human reason. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

It means having qualities that makes someone one of a kind. Nature for him is thus, is a universal and general regulation that beyond human beings control or grasp but is indispensable in influencing their literary creation. It seems more of a divine source of inspiration or a sort of sacred rules than personal skills or individual talent. Pope says that Nature has the capability to render “life, force and beauty” to an art. Literary creation and appreciation is redefined and regulated by Nature. Nature constitutes and functions as “the Source, and End, and Text of art”. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

To acquire a better judgement and redefined taste of Literature depends on Nature, which is “just”, “unerring”, “divinely bright”, “clear” and “universal”. Any art that fails to reflect nature is not worth to be called an art at all. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

In the essay “An Essay on Criticism”, Pope puts a great emphasis on the word “Wit”. The word wit in Pope’s time could refer in general to intelligence, it also meant in the modern sense of cleverness, as expressed in figures of speech and especially discerning unanticipated similarities between different entities. Wit according to Pope is the general ability of a writer to express the truth and morality. According to Pope, wit is the reflection of imitation. True wit, exists in the relationship among ideal image and expression. Wit is like an everlasting sea. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope subsequently says that expression is the “Dress of Thought” and that “true expression” throws light on objects without altering them. The lines above are concentrated expressions of Pope’s classicism. If wit is the “dress” of nature, it will express nature without altering it. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

While Pope says that the good poets makes the best critics, and while he notice that some critics are failed poets, he points out that both the best poetry or the best criticism are divinely inspired: “Both must alike from Heav’n derive their Light” (13-14). Pope sees the endeavour of criticism as a noble one, provided it abides by Horace’s advice for the poet:

"But you who seek to give and merit Fame,

And just bare a Critick’s noble Name,

Be sure your self and your own Reach to know,

How far your Genius, Taste , and Learning go

Launch not beyond your Depth... (46-56)"

Apart from knowing his own capacities, the critic must also be fully familiar with every aspect of the author whom he/she is examining. Pope suggests the critic that he base his interpretation on the author’s intention: “In ev’ry Work regard the Writer’s End, / Since none can compass more than they Intend”. (233-234, 255-256). (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope notes down two other guidelines to be followed by the writers and the critics. The first is to recognize the overall unity of a work and thereby to avoid falling into partial assessments based on the writer’s use of poetic, conceits, ornamented language, meters as well as judgements which are biased towards either archaic or modern styles or based on the reputations of given writers. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope, finally advices that a critic needs to possess a moral sensibility, as well as a sense of balance and proportion, this he indicates in the lines: “Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost! / Good-Nature and Good-Sense must ever join” (523-525). (An Overview of An Essay of Criticism)

Pope then, ends his advice with a summary of an ideal critic:

"But where’s the Man, who counsel can bestow,...

And Love to Praise, with Reason on his Side? (631-642)"

The qualities of a good critic are primarily attributes of humanity or moral sensibility rather than aesthetic qualities. Indeed, the only specifically aesthetic quality mentioned here is “taste”. The remaining virtues might be said to have theological ground, resting on the ability to overcome pride. Pope effectively transposes the language of theology (“soul” and “pride”). The reason to which Pope appeals is (as in Aquinas and many medieval thinkers) a universal representation in human nature, and is a result of humility. It is thus, a disposition of humility – an aesthetic humility, if you will – which enables the critic to avoid the foregoing faults. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Now, Pope goes on to provide advice to both poet and critic. The utmost important advice here is to “follow Nature,” whose restraining function he explains:

"Nature is all fix’d the Limits fit,

And wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit;

... One Science only will one Genius fit;

So vast is Art, so Narrow Human Wit ... (52 – 53)"

Pope, designates human wit generally as an instrument of Pride. He, however, clarifies that in the scheme of nature, man’s wit finds an appropriate place. It is in this context Pope says that:

"First follow NATURE, and your Judgement frame

By her just Standard, which is still the same;

Unerring Nature, which is still divinely bright,

Once clear, unchang’d and Universal Light,

Life, Force, and Beauty, must to all impart,

At once the Source, and End, and Test of Art." (68 – 73) (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope unlike other medieval rhetoricians, does not entirely believes that poetry is a rational process. He seems to assert the primacy of wit over judgement, of art over criticism, viewing art as inspired and as transcending the norms of conventional thinking in its direct appeal to the heart. The critic’s task here as Pope suggests, is to recognize the superiority of great wit. While these emphasis strides beyond many medieval and Renaissance aesthetics, it must of course be read in its own poetic context. He warns the writers and authors that should not just rely on their own insights but draw on the common store of poetic wisdom, established by the ancients. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope’s exploration of wit lines up with the central classical virtues, which are themselves equated with Nature: “True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest,/ What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest” (297-298). Pope subsequently says that expression is the “Dress of Thought” and that “true expression” throws light on objects without altering them. The lines above are concentrated expressions of Pope’s classicism. If wit is the “dress” of nature, it will express nature without altering it. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

The poet’s task here is twofold: not only to find the expression that will most truly convey nature, but to ensure that the substance he is expressing is indeed a natural insight or thought.

Another classical ideal urged by Pope is that of organic unity and wholeness. The expression or style must be suited to the subject matter and meaning: “The Sound must seem an Echo to the Sense ” (365)

Pope advices both Poet and critic to follow the Aristotelian ethical maxim: “Avoid Extremes”. For those who excess in any direction display “Great Pride, or Little Sense” (384 – 387). (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Indeed the central passage in “An Essay on Criticism”, as in the later “Essay on Man”, Pope views all the major faults as stemming from pride. It is pride which leads critics and poets to overlook universal truths in favour of subjective whims: pride which cause them to value only certain parts but not the whole, which disables them to attain a harmony between wit and judgement, and pride which underlies their excesses and biases. (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope’s final strategy in “An Essay on Criticism” is to equate the classical literary and critical traditions with nature, and to sketch a redefined outline of literary history from classical times to his own era. Pope insists that the rules of nature were merely discovered, not invented, by the ancients: “Those Rules of old discover’d, not devis’d, / Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d” (88-89). (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism)

Pope’s advice for both critic and poet is clear: “Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem; / To copy Nature is to copy Them” (139 – 140). Pope traces the genealogy of “nature”, as embodied in classical authors.

When was An Essay on Criticism published?

What does pope say about nature, what did alexander pope say about "wit", what advice did pope give to critics and poets in his essay "an essay on criticism".

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Join Alexander Pope on a metaphysical journey of discovery… that will last a lifetime.

“[It is] difficult to know which part to prefer, when all is equally beautiful and noble.” Weekly Miscellany comments on the poetry of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope spent his childhood in Windsor forest and, from an early age, gained a keen appreciation for nature. Later in his life he lived in a property by the River Thames in London where he cultivated his own garden that he opened for visitors. In today’s poem, written in 1709, we can see this love of the natural world through his shaping of elements of the landscape into an extended metaphor for knowledge. This landscape is vast and mountainous: the Alps , Europe’s largest mountain range are a prominent feature, as are hills, vales , an endless sky and eternal snows . Compared to this vast landscape, people are almost insignificant. Their role in the poem is to act as explorers who set off on a journey of discovery, trying to conquer the highest mountains by ascending to the summit; we tempt the heights of Arts… the towering Alps we try… Finally, despite being almost exhausted by his efforts, the explorer realises that his journey has barely begun; the mountain vista stretches ahead, unbroken, into the distance:

A poem’s central idea, often developed into an extended metaphor, is known as a conceit . Unlocking the first couplet should provide you the key to Pope’s conceit in An Essay on Criticism . Pope begins with a warning that:

The Pierian Spring is an important place in Greek Mythology , the source of a river of knowledge that was associated with the nine ancient Muses, themselves a metaphor for artistic inspiration. In this poem, it’s part of the landscape that functions as an extended metaphor for learning. It might seem strange that Pope begins by giving his readers a warning to taste not the waters of this river. However, it’s important to realise that Pope isn’t saying not to drink from the well of knowledge at all. He tells us to drink deep , emphasising his instruction with both alliterative D and using the imperative tense (where the verb is placed at the beginning of the line or phrase). To Pope’s mind, learning is seductive and intoxicating . Once you set out on the journey of learning, or take even a tiny sip from the wellspring of knowledge, you won’t be able to resist the temptation to learn more. Therefore, he suggests that you either prepare to immerse yourself completely in the Pierian Spring , or don’t drink at all.

Once you’ve discovered the connotations of Pierian Spring , the rest of the poem can be read as a warning (or criticism ) of anyone who is rash enough not to follow Pope’s instruction. Should you venture unprepared into the unknown, you must be clear about your limitations. As a spring is the starting point of a river, so too is it the starting point of Pope’s extended metaphor . From here, the reader sets out on a journey into an imposing mountainous landscape that, while initially appearing it can be ‘climbed’ or conquered, actually keeps expanding into an endless vista. No matter how far the explorer climbs, the top of the mountain never gets any nearer. Heights, lengthening way, increasing prospect and, most telling of all, eternal snows conjure the visual image of the landscape metaphysically stretching out in front of our weary eyes. Individual people are tiny and easily lost in this ever-shifting world. Pope creates a contrast between the boundless landscape and the bounded limits of human perception. At the last, the human explorer is tired by his efforts to conquer these mountains of knowledge – but the poem ends by revealing that he’d barely even gotten started on his journey: Hills peep o’er hills; Alps upon Alps arise .

Before we get too much further into the discussion of Pope’s ‘essay’, it might be helpful to place these lines in context. Despite the way they seem to be a complete poem in themselves, they are actually part of a much longer poem which stretches to three parts and a total of 744 lines! The eighteen-line extract you’ve read constitutes the second verse of Part 2 and it may help you to know that, in the first verse, Pope singled out pride as the characteristic that would eventually lead to the downfall of his explorer. Here are four lines from earlier in the Essay:

In this short sample, you can see the names Pope calls people who rush off on foolhardy adventures without taking the time to properly prepare: blind man , weak head and fools ! Younger readers might not enjoy this interpretation, but Pope finds the overconfidence of young people most problematic, associating youth with a kind of recklessness that, in hindsight, is misplaced.

You may argue that qualities such as fearless and passionate (fired) seem like compliments; but I detect a note of criticism in Pope’s words; he suggests that young people confuse emotion with clear thinking and they are too eager to plunge into the unknown. There’s an emphasis on speed and rashness ( pleased at first; at first sight ) that cannot last, like a novice marathon runner who goes sprinting out of the blocks while older, more wily competitors know to save themselves for the challenges ahead. While the young explorer does encounter some early success (implied by words like mount , more advanced , attained and, more significantly by an image : tread the sky ), the race is longer than the runner thought and inevitably the pace must sag. Later in the poem, positive diction disappears and words like trembling , growing labours , and tired take over as the true scale of the challenge becomes apparent. Sharp-eyed readers will already have noticed that the image of ‘treading the sky’ was in fact a simile : seem to tread the sky. Subtly, Pope’s use of a simile implies that any success the explorer thought he’d achieved wasn’t actually real.

The implication that over-enthusiasm can cloud good judgment can be traced through diction to do with looking and seeing: a t first sight, short views, see, behold, appear, survey, eyes and peep pepper the poem and convey the poet’s belief that, to our detriment, we can be short-sighted and tunnel-visioned. The eighth line of the poem is entirely concerned with this idea: short views we take, nor see the lengths behind paints a picture of a young explorer who only looks in one direction – eyes fixed straight ahead – and so misses the bigger picture.

While the poem is certainly didactic (it’s trying to impart a lesson), Pope’s tone of voice is not too condescending or stand-offish because he includes himself in his criticism as well. Throughout the poem the words us, we and our soften his accusations so there’s never a ‘them-and-us’ divide between young and old. In fact, Pope was only 21 years old when he finished his Essay on Criticism , so use your mind’s ear to imagine him speaking ruefully from experience, rather than as a nagging or pestering adult complaining about ‘young people today.’ The line Fired at first sight by what the Muse imparts is revealing in this regard. Alluding to the nine Muses of Greek mythology , this line personifies poetic inspiration, so in one sense the extended metaphor of trying to conquer an unknowable landscape represents his own experiences of writing poetry. ‘Meta-poems’ (poems about the writing of poems) actually have a name: ars poetica . Pope implies that rushing off on a path of artistic endeavour without realising the true extent of the commitment that entails is a mistake that he himself has made in his own attempts at writing.

If you’re a student reading this who thinks you might be able to use Pope’s poem as an excuse not to do your homework or give up on your own writing: you shouldn’t be too rash. Pope’s not suggesting we should quit. Instead, he’s warning us that what might seem like a shallow pool is in fact a deep river of knowledge. Once you jump in, the current will sweep you away and there’s no going back. The poem is a criticism of unpreparedness and arrogance rather than an acknowledgement of futility. In fact, an element of form suggests that, for all the faults Pope has pointed out in young people who are too confident in their limited abilities, it is much more praiseworthy to try and fail to conquer the heights than never to try at all. The poem is written in iambic pentameter that is constant and regular as if, no matter how tough the going gets, the young explorer doesn’t give up. Compare these two lines, with iambic accents marked, from the beginning and end of the poem to see how the rhythm is unfailing:

More, the poem is arranged in rhyming couplets (the rhyme scheme is AA, BB, CC and so on). Rhyming couplets written in iambic pentameter are traditionally known by a more dramatic name: heroic couplets . Pope was widely considered to be the master of writing poetry in heroic couplets ; using them here implies that Pope ultimately believes any young person who’s brave – or foolhardy – enough to embark upon the lifelong journey of learning is worthy of praise.

The structure of Pope’s poetical essay matches the message he’s trying to convey – that, once you start learning, you won’t be able to stop. Look carefully at the punctuation marks, in particular his use of full stops . You’ll find the first one at the end of the fourth line, the second after the tenth and the third at the end of the poem (after eighteen lines). In other words, if the poem was arranged in verses, the first verse would be nice and short at only four lines, the second would stretch to six, but the final verse would have doubled in length to eight lines. Expanding sentences represent the conceit – a little learning is a dangerous thing – and match the images of the landscape expanding ( eternal snows , increasing prospect, lengthening way ) as you read further down the poem.

The end of the poem brings Pope’s criticism to its conclusion. We see the young explorer break through the eternal snows , climb above the clouds, and stand triumphantly on the mountain top, proudly surveying his achievements. Only now does he take a moment to look more deliberately at the mountains he’s trying to conquer:

Be alert to two words that might seem insignificant: appear and seem , words that signal the mistake the explorer made; he thought that he had already past the bulk of his journey. Read carefully to punctuation as well, and you’ll see the colon – a longer pause, which creates a caseura – representing the traveler pausing at the moment of his triumph… and it’s here that realisation finally dawns. Despite the difficulty of his climb thus far, the landscape ( increasing prospect ) stretches out endlessly in front of him: Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise . Here, repetition mixes with all that increasing and lengthening diction to create a surreal image of an ever-expanding landscape stretching out ahead. You might also notice P sounds peppering the last two lines of the poem in the words p ee p , Al p s, Al p s, and p ros p ect . Coming from a category of alliteration called plosive , this sound is excellent at conveying a release of negative emotion, as it is formed by pushing air through closed lips. The sound helps us perceive the taste of victory turning to defeat as the weary traveler’s shoulders slump at the prospect of the endless climb still to come.

What does Pope offer as a solution? He already warned us at the start of the poem: drinking largely sobers us again . Suddenly, the importance of the word sober becomes clear. While the idea of heading off on this journey of discovery was intoxicating , firing up those with passion to learn, discover and explore – the reality is very different. That young, over-confident learner/explorer is gone, replaced by a wiser, but more world-weary traveler who can finally see the true scale of the task ahead. By now it’s too late, he’s stuck on the mountain top and there’s only one thing he can do – go onwards!

So drink deep and be prepared to encounter much more than you expected when you set out on your journey.

Suggested poems for comparison:

from Essay on Man by Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism was not the only poetical essay written by Pope. French writer Voltaire so admired Pope’s Essay on Man that he arranged for its translation into French and from there it spread around Europe.

Marrysong by Dennis Scott

As in Pope’s poem, Scott creates a metaphor of the landscape to represent his marriage. He is an explorer in a strange land – each time the explorer glances up from his map, the landscape has changed and he’s lost again.

Through the Dark Sod – As Education by Emily Dickinson

Victorians brought many different associations to all kinds of plants and flowers. In this Emily Dickinson poem, the lily represents beauty, purity and rebirth. This link will also take you to a fantastic blog which aims to read and provide comment on all of Emily Dickinson’s poems. So that’s 1 down, and nearly 2000 more to go…

In the Mountains by Wang Wei

Often spoken of with the same reverence as Li Bai and Du Fu, Wang Wei is a famous imagist poet in China. In these exquisite portrait poems, Wang Wei paints pictures of the impressive landscapes of his mountain home.

Additional Resources

If you are teaching or studying An Essay on Criticism at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed this analysis of the poem and would like to discover more, you might like to purchase our bespoke study bundle for this poem. It costs only £2 and includes:

Study Questions with guidance on how to answer in full paragraphs;
A sample analytical paragraph for essay writing;
An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem;
An in-depth worksheet with a focus on analysing diction and explaining lexical fields ;
A fun crossword quiz, perfect for a starter activity, revision or a recap;
A four-page activity booklet that can be printed and folded into a handout – ideal for self study or revision;
4 practice Essay Questions – and one complete model Essay Plan.

And… discuss!

Did you enjoy this analysis of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism ? Do you agree that the poem somewhat singles out young people? Can you relate to Pope’s messages about the temptations of learning? Why not share your ideas, ask a question, or leave a comment for others to read below. For nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

Ballad Criticism, Genre Theory, and the Dismantling of Rhetoric

First Online: 02 January 2022

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Ralph Cohen 5 &
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Cohen indicates the historical transformations that take place when the discipline of rhetoric is dispersed and its explanatory power displaced by other procedures, by the kind of explanations that rhetoric could not make. In a brilliant analysis, he takes “a problem that involves persuasion and examine[s] how persuasion is accomplished. The problem is the elevation of one kind of writing to a kind respected by the learned—popular ballads to a recognized literary genre. The dismantling of rhetoric as a discipline and the elevation of the ballad to literary status can be seen as complementary phenomena: the decline of a discipline which systematized oral communication and the rise of an oral poetic form that became divorced from orality, became a written rather than oral genre.”

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Addison, Joseph, and Richard Steele, The Spectator , ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols., 1: No. 85. My citations are by number.

The Poems of Alexander Pope , ed. John Butt (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1963), 148.

William Wagstaffe, A Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb, in Miscellaneous Works of Dr. William Wagstaffe , 2nd ed. (London: Printed for Jonah Bowyer, 1726), 4.

Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry , 4th ed., 3 vols. (London: John Nichols, 1794), 1:xvii.

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Cohen, R., Rowlett, J.L. (2021). Ballad Criticism, Genre Theory, and the Dismantling of Rhetoric. In: Rowlett, J.L. (eds) Transformations of a Genre. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89668-3_12

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Genre Criticism

In the latter half of the 20th Century, Rhetorical Studies underwent something of a democratization. The term democratization typically conjures images of a collapsing political regime moving toward democratic ideals and practices, thereby making the system more open and accessible. In much the same way, Rhetorical Studies in this period began to question the dominant practices that dogged the discipline for, quite literally, several millennia – and slowly redefined not only what “rhetoric” meant, but also what it meant to study the art. No longer were scholars confined to the traditions of the past – instead, this democratization urged new ways of thinking.

Of course, this is not to suggest that Rhetorical Studies once operated in the same fashion as an authoritarian regime – just simply that for the better part of its history, to engage rhetoric meant to only engage with Aristotle, with secondary and tertiary focus on other Ancient Greek and Roman figures. Although the other forms of rhetorical criticism that are discussed in our article on Rhetorical Studies certainly came into being as a result of this democratization, Genre Criticism is a manifestation that, by and large, was born early in the process.

In this article, we further explore genre and Genre Criticism, briefly articulate the history of Genre Criticism in Rhetorical Studies, and then feature some scholars whose work employs this method of rhetorical criticism. Afterwards, we consider Genre Criticism’s place in Rhetorical Studies today and look ahead to its future.

Further Exploring Genre

As we mentioned in our article on Rhetorical Studies , genre is a “constellation of recognizable forms bound together by an internal dynamic” (Campbell & Jamieson, 1978). These “constellations” can take shape in communicative forms throughout culture. Indeed, while popular connotations of genre include styles of music and film, genre is perhaps best known in its literary and artistic forms – and we typically draw from terminology in literary studies when discussing genre in most instances. Comedies and tragedies, for example, are prevalent in literature as well as film.

In preparing to conduct some form of Genre Criticism, students ought to begin with something they consider familiar – like a genre of music or film. What about your favorite genre of music, for example, moves you the most? Be as specific as possible – is it the subject or tone of the lyrics, the instruments used, the beat, the vocalics of the various vocalists? Then, consider what is common across the genre. What stays consistent? What changes? What does this do or not do for audiences?

Beginning with something familiar can help students attempting to perform a Genre Criticism at the graduate level get in the right state of mind in recognizing the internal dynamics that comprise rhetorical genres. While theorizing a new genre of discourse is certainly exciting and remarkable – consider what has not been said about an existing genre of discourse. What does this gap mean for the genre – or what does this gap say about the study of rhetoric? Without question, exploring genre further can be challenging – but also rewarding.

Featured Scholars Researching Genre in Rhetorical Studies

Although mostly retired, Dr. Miller’s work in both teaching and researching genre continues to be thoroughly influential. In addition to being the founding director of NC State’s Ph.D. program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, Dr. Miller penned or edited several essays and books that further advance our understanding of genre in rhetoric. Most recently, Dr. Miller co-edited two books on Genre Criticism – Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies (2018) and Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (2017).

With research interests housed at the intersection of health and medical rhetoric, discourses on illness, and gender and technology, Dr. Arduser utilizes Genre Criticism often. Her approach to genre is thoroughly interdisciplinary – she has a background in English Literature, Anthropology, and Technical Communication – and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Arduser’s chapter in the aforementioned book Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (2017) is entitled “Remediating Diagnosis: A Familiar Narrative Form or Emerging Digital Genre?”

The co-editor of Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (2017) with Dr. Miller, Dr. Mehlenbacher is a scholar specializing in science communication and its manifestations in various networked publics. Dr. Mehlenbacher is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Like Dr. Arduser, Dr. Mehlenbacher employs Genre Criticism often in her work, also bringing an interdisciplinary background to the method and methodology.

Admittedly, most of Dr. Gunn’s research cannot be labeled singularly under “Genre Criticism.” However, his 2012 essay “Maranatha” in the Quarterly Journal of Speech demonstrated both the versatility of Genre Criticism in its traditional application, and its malleable nature in more modern and non-discursive contexts. In this essay, Dr. Gunn analyzed Mel Gibson’s viscerally violent depiction of Jesus’ final hours in The Passion of the Christ and extended genre criticism to what he (and others) call “bodily affect.”

Dr. Devitt studies “everyday genres,” or the genres that people encounter on a regular basis (“Amy J. Devitt,” 2012). In addition to co-editing Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies with Dr. Miller, Dr. Devitt has written more than a dozen peer-reviewed essays and books on genre, including Writing Genres (2004) and “Genre: Performance and Change” (with Dr. Miller, 2018). As a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas, Dr. Devitt blends her research with her teaching – and also writes a blog about genre, helping to bridge the divide between the fabled “Ivory Tower” of academia and the general public.

Currently a Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Bazerman’s research centers on genre and scientific writing as it developed throughout history. Throughout his career, Dr. Bazerman has penned more than a dozen books and has edited over twenty collections on genre and writing. Perhaps most notably, Dr. Bazerman proposed that genre, as we commonly understand it, constitute meaning in the context of other genres. In other words, the lines of demarcation from one genre help set the parameters of another.

The History of Genre Criticism in Rhetorical Studies

While genre was studied in other humanistic academic traditions – namely English and Literature – for some time, it wasn’t until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s that studying genre gained traction in Speech Communication departments across the United States. Many scholars point to Ware and Linkugel’s (1973) essay in the Quarterly Journal of Speech , “They Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,” as the inception of Genre Criticism in Speech and Communication Studies.

Indeed, most graduate seminars in Rhetorical Studies will introduce Genre Criticism to students through Ware and Linkugel’s (1973) now foundational essay. In this essay, the authors claimed that instances of apologia, or, apologetic discourse in which speakers defend themselves from charges against their character or actions, to be a universally prevalent form of public address across human history, with particular emphasis on its import in modernity.

Borrowing from Abelson’s (1959) four modes of resolution, Ware and Linkugel (1973) argued that apologetic discourse is a distinct genre of rhetoric in that speakers, when accused of something, will employ one of, or a series of, the four modes in defending themselves. The four modes of resolution are: denial, bolstering, differentiation, and transcendence. With this terminology, Ware & Linkugel (1973) analyzed several speeches, like then-Senator Ted Kennedy’s “Chappaquiddick” Speech and Eugene V. Debs’ remarks at his trial for supposed violations to the Espionage Act, revealing the nuanced ways the speakers orally defended their character and actions.

After graduate students are introduced to Genre Criticism through apologia, most courses will then feature work from Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. While Campbell and Jamieson are featured in our article on Presidential Communication Research , their work in Genre Criticism is similarly foundational to Communication Studies. Indeed, Campbell and Jamieson’s (1978) book – and their introductory essay to the book – “Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action” further delineated genre and rhetoric.

Combining both genre and Presidential Communication research, Campbell and Jamieson (updated in 2008) compiled yet another landmark set of research in their book Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words . From Inaugural Addresses to war rhetoric, Campbell and Jamieson (2008) set the parameters of the use of genre in Presidential Communication, and thoroughly articulated its uses throughout American history.

Genre Criticism Today

In any Communication Studies graduate seminar, the question a student will inevitably be asked when crafting an essay will be “so what?” Put differently, why does what is being studied matter and what is this scholarship revealing? Indeed, these are questions that every academic must keep in mind when researching and writing.

Perhaps more so than other forms of rhetorical criticism, a common challenge in examining genre in rhetoric typically assumes the form of the aforementioned questions – with the added caveat: what happens when all the genres of discourse are accounted for? In other words – what is the point of Genre Criticism, or what can Genre Criticism reveal that is new, interesting, or unique? When made in good faith, this challenge is certainly warranted. However, bad faith critiques largely ignore the possibility of new modes of discourse or instances when rhetors subvert existing genres.

For example, while Presidential War Rhetoric is a thoroughly researched and well-documented genre – does President Trump’s use of twitter in notifying the public of his decision to conduct airstrikes in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad employed chemical weapons against his own people constitute as a unique subversion to the genre worthy of further examination? Or, what are the rhetorical implications of President Trump – or even future presidents – tweeting their intent to ask Congress to declare war well before formally sending the request to the constitutionally constructed co-equal branch in American government?

A student examining President Trump’s addition – or his challenge – to the genre of Presidential War Rhetoric could take many paths in constructing their argument. Perhaps the student could ground their argument in historical precedent, claiming that presidents have always sought to expand the rhetorical capabilities of their position in the context of war, and President Trump’s use of twitter is just another iteration of that tradition.

Or, working with their colleagues in the quantitative realm, the burgeoning Genre Critic in Rhetorical Studies could first quantify the number of times President Trump tweeted about military action, then perhaps code for instances where his language matched that of previous declarations of war and where it differed, and then draw conclusions from there. Perhaps even doing a comparison between the use of war rhetoric on twitter between former President Obama and President Trump could reveal Trump’s addition or challenge to the existing genre.

For the creation of new modes of discourse, the internet’s rapid ascent cannot be overstated. Indeed, the internet created a mechanism to instantly disseminate culture, forever changing communication and what can be deemed culturally relevant. While seemingly ridiculous at first thought, the advent of memes presented scholars of genre and rhetoric a new mode of communication to examine. Through the mixture of images and text, memes express and articulate culture, constitute a shared identity, and can even make arguments. Although meme creation and proliferation is truly organic, memes contain a strikingly consistent internal dynamic, thereby creating a new genre of discourse to study.

Communication scholars across the board have only started to scratch the surface of this vast new genre of discourse. For Genre Criticism in Rhetorical Studies, there is still much to be said and explored, and students looking to further study genre in rhetoric ought to begin with the seminal essays and books discussed earlier – and should certainly begin to read the research of the scholars presented above. Additionally, the annual National Communication Conference – and the various regional conferences – are a great opportunity for aspiring graduate students to observe the latest research from scholars as storied as Campbell and Jamieson to newly minted graduate students.

Sources and Additional Resources

For more information on genre criticism and its place in rhetorical studies, please refer to the resources listed below.

Campbell, K. K., & Jamieson, K. H. (1978). Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action .
Campbell, K. K., & Jamieson, K. H. (2008). Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words . University of Chicago Press.
Gunn, J. (2012). Maranatha. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 98(4), 359–385. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00335630.2012.714900
Prasch, A. M. (2015). Retelling Watergate: Apologia, Political Eulogy, and Richard Nixon’s “Final Campaign.” Southern Communication Journal , 80(4), 271–292. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1041794X.2015.1045622
Ware, B. l., & Linkugel, W. A. (1973). They Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 59(3), 273.

Additional Topics on Research in Rhetorical Studies

This guide provides an in-depth discussion of rhetorical studies, describing the history and significance of the discipline while also providing readers with theories that are useful to understanding different forms of rhetoric and their functions in human communication.

This article discusses the field of critical rhetoric and its importance in the examination and exposure of power dynamics in society. It also provides information on key scholars in the field who study how rhetoric connects to equality, politics, and cultural values.

This detailed article discusses the history and forms of gender criticism in rhetorical studies, and also explains the political, social, and cultural significance of this field of study.

This article explores scholarly approaches to understanding persuasion as material. Explore how scholars have attempted to understand rhetorical discourse as a material thing, and, on the other hand, how material things, like monuments and roads, can be politically persuasive.

This article explains how metaphors are widely used in human communication and understanding, and provides a background on the history and prominent scholarship of this field.

This article covers narrative criticism and the role it plays in culture, politics, and relationships, while also providing examples of prominent scholarship in this field.

This article examines the history and impact of social movement rhetorical research, and provides readers with a detailed overview of some of the latest research in the field that is being completed by eminent scholars of social justice and civil rights rhetoric.

Assessment Rubric for Genre Analysis

* Rubrics are subject to minor changes. Students will be notified if changes occur.

The Cowardice of Guernica

The literary magazine Guernica ’s decision to retract an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals much about how the war is hardening human sentiment.

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In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—for years she has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

Read: Beware the language that erases reality

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.

How Beyoncé Fits Into the Storied Legacy of Black Country

Randall is an award-winning professor, songwriter, and author of My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future

O n March 16, 1983, the Country Music Association (CMA) celebrated its 25th anniversary, and I was invited. Buddy Killen, the song publisher who pitched “Heartbreak Hotel” to Elvis Presley, thought “the Black girl from Harvard” might just be the second coming of that hit’s songwriter, Mae Boren Axton. He put me on the guest list and paid for the tickets.

It was a complicated night. The event was held at the DAR Constitution Hall, built by the Daughters of the American Revolution, an infamous venue whose management had refused to allow Black opera star Marian Anderson to perform on its stage in 1939. I took special pleasure in seeing guitarist and singer Charley Pride stride onto that stage—in a building named to honor the U.S. Constitution, but run to exclude Black artists—and stake his claim as part of that “We the People” that document claims to represent.

At one point in the ceremony, singer Roy Acuff announced that “country music is a family.” Then he proclaimed Jimmie Rodgers “the father” of that family. But he did not mention Lil Hardin Armstrong, the pianist who played on Rodgers’ hit “Blue Yodel No. 9.” Acuff nodded to Will Rogers, the comedian, but shamelessly omitted DeFord Bailey , the Grand Ole Opry’s first superstar.

My idea to name and spotlight the First Family of Black Country was conceived in that moment. It was nurtured in the silence of missing names. Quiet as it was being kept, country had Black founders. I knew it; Buddy Killen, who arrived in Nashville playing bass for a blackface comedy act on the Grand Ole Opry, knew it; Roy Acuff, who had played on stages with Bailey, Ray Charles, and Pride, knew it. And more than four decades later, Beyoncé knew it when she broke the internet on Super Bowl Sunday by surprise—releasing two country songs and announcing an album, Cowboy Carter , which has her devoted fans in the Beyhive buzzing about line-dancing into the summer of country.

Read More: Beyoncé Has Always Been Country

That evening back in 1983 was constructed to be country’s coming-out party as a musical genre worthy of exceptional respect because it was a reflection and celebration of America at its best. And that best was being defined as a family having only white founders—and not a single Black woman in sight. It was a fallacy that could only last so long.

The way I see it, modern Black country was born on Dec. 10, 1927, when Bailey, descended from enslaved Tennesseans, lifted his harmonica to play “Pan American Blues” on the Nashville radio show Barn Dance. Fast forward to July 16, 1930, in Los Angeles, where Armstrong made country music history as the first Black woman to play on a hillbilly record that sold a million copies. And Lil didn’t just play on the session—her piano drove the session.

Country is not as many have posited: a genre with Black influence but without Black presence. Black women have been present since the earliest days of country’s existence as a recorded and commercially marketed music form. But a custom of cultural redlining has not only kept Black women out of country writing rooms, off country airwaves, off rodeo stages, off the country charts; it has also worked to keep the few Black women who managed to evade the gatekeepers off the entertainment pages, and out of the history books.

This would change. Nobody sitting in the room that night knew it, but there was a little girl toddling around a two-story house in Houston who would bring the long era of -erasing Black country sounds and stories to an abrupt end. The calculated erasure that began at one large public party with expensive tickets in 1983 ended during another, Super Bowl LVIII, when Beyoncé released “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages.”

Along with “Daddy Lessons” off of 2016’s Lemonade, these songs have established Beyoncé as heir to a Black country musical tradition that dates back to the 17th century, when the first banjo was strummed by Black hands on American soil. Like DeFord Bailey’s, Beyoncé’s country songs are grounded in aural rural realities: the screech of the passing train, the sound from the local bar where folk are dancing. Like Lil, she understands the power of a costume and a trumpet. Like Ray Charles she brings a whiff of the Black cosmopolitan. Like Charley Pride she exudes a radiant Old Testament Song of Songs sexuality that is at once hot and holy. Like Herb Jeffries she embodies the cowboy who stays close to nature and guns.

The erasure did not end just because Beyoncé Knowles Carter became the first Black female artist to top the country charts, though she did that, on Feb. 24. And there are many others who have laid the groundwork for this catalytic moment: Linda Martell, the Pointer Sisters, Rissi Palmer, Rhiannon Giddens, Mickey Guyton, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, and O.N.E the Duo, to name just a few.

The erasure ended when she started a sustained national conversation, getting America to talk about and celebrate neglected Black country legacy. The question of “Who can be in country music?” often masks a deeper query about “Who can be a real American?” Beyoncé’s was a loud announcement of a reality long denied, that she was “We the People.” And so were people who looked like her.

I’ve often said that country music is three chords and four truths: life is hard, God is real, whiskey and roads and family provide worthy compensations, and the past is better than the present. That last truth is one of the places where country often experiences a racial split. In much of white country, the past that is better than the present exists in a longed-for and lost mythical Dixie. In Black country, the past that is better than the present exists in a longed-for and lost Africa before colonization.

Country music is commonly defined as American folk music with Celtic, African, and evangelical Christian influences. My ancestors come from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Mali, from Scotland, England, and Ireland. I am country music, embodied. I started songwriting sitting under a Motown cherry tree, about the age of 5, in 1964. I would eat candied cherries, watching a sea of cars flow by on the John C. Lodge Freeway, and let country songs—from my grandmother’s lips, my mother’s radio, my aunt’s -stereo—roll ’round my head. I started off singing other people’s words then one day I started singing my own, the auspicious beginnings of a career that would land me in the top spot on the country charts.

Read More: Black Artists Helped Build Country Music—And Then It Left Them Behind

My daddy hipped me to the fact that it was Lil Hardin on Jimmie Rodgers’ biggest hit, and that there were probably a lot more Black folks passing for white on country records. He would look at some sheet music or hymnal, then ask, “What you bet Traditional was a colored girl?”

I write country music because it is a way to make what is too hard to bear somehow bearable. Beyoncé in “Texas Hold ’Em” does this same work, squaring off against tornadoes, heat waves, and lovers losing courage, as DeFord had squared off against a sense of being relentlessly pursued in “Fox Chase.” Both songs transform hardship into a particular flavor of playful and hopeful joy I recognize as country.

To close out the CMA anniversary show, Ray Charles sang “America the Beautiful.” Listening to the man behind what has been called the greatest country album, 1962’s Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, it struck me how entwined he was in the legacy of Black country. This was Armstrong and Bailey’s genius child. Next to him was country-as-corn-bread Pride, a spiritual love child to Bailey. On the other side of the family tree, Herb Jeffries, who wasn’t present in the auditorium but should have been, was Armstrong’s stepchild.

Among a sea of white people, including the President and Vice President of the U.S. and the presidents of every major country-music label, I had an inkling I was the only person in that room worried about singing Black cowboys, worried about Jeffries, wondering why he wasn’t there.

Now Beyoncé has changed that room entirely. Cowboy Carter is poised to be a brilliant new beginning and a culmination. As I see it, Beyoncé is the genius child of Ray Charles. The daughter who eclipses the father. The reflected light of her triumph makes visible both the lineage from which she aesthetically descends and the reality that Black country is a big tent with many entry points: from banjos, harmonicas, and cowboy songs to movies and Motown cherry trees. Beyoncé raises this question: If country owes a significant debt to Black culture, what in America doesn’t?

Adapted from My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future . Copyright © 2024 by Alice Randall. Reprinted by permission of Black Privilege Publishing, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.

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Beyoncé says new 'Cowboy Carter' album inspired by backlash to her entering country genre

Beyoncé shared an Instagram post Tuesday explaining the inspiration behind her coming album, "Cowboy Carter."

She wrote that she has been working for five years on “Cowboy Carter,” a project "born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed."

Fans speculated that Beyoncé was referring to the 2016 Country Music Awards, during which she performed her song "Daddy Lessons" with the country group The Chicks. While Beyoncé fans celebrated the performance, it also dr e w backlash at the time.

“Cowboy Carter” is the second installment of a three-part project that started with the release of Beyonce’s 2022 dance music album, “Renaissance.” Many believe the project is her attempt to reclaim genres of music pioneered by Black artists.

When Beyoncé released the singles "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages," Black country artists said they hoped her coming album would bring more exposure to Black country music.

Beyoncé wrote that her experience motivated her to do a "deeper dive" into the history of country music.

"The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me," she wrote. "act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work."

While the singles off of "Cowboy Carter" have been country songs, Beyoncé wrote: "This ain’t a Country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album." She also said the album is a "continuation of Renaissance."

Beyoncé recently made history as the first Black woman to top the Billboard country chart with her single "Texas Hold 'Em." In her Instagram post, she said she was "honored" to do so.

"That would not have happened without the outpouring of support from each and every one of you,” she wrote on Instagram. "My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant."

Beyoncé announced her coming album during the Super Bowl and recently revealed the title as "Cowboy Carter." It will be released March 29.

Daysia Tolentino is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.

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An Essay on Criticism Summary & Analysis
Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" seeks to lay down rules of good taste in poetry criticism, and in poetry itself. 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 ...
An Essay on Criticism
An Essay on Criticism is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744), published in 1711. It is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human; to forgive, divine", "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" (frequently misquoted as "A little knowledge is a dang'rous thing"), and "Fools rush in ...
An Essay on Criticism
An Essay on Criticism, didactic poem in heroic couplets by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in 1711 when the author was 22 years old.Although inspired by Horace's Ars poetica, this work of literary criticism borrowed from the writers of the Augustan Age.In it Pope set out poetic rules, a Neoclassical compendium of maxims, with a combination of ambitious argument and great ...
Analysis of Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism
An Essay on Criticism (1711) was Pope's first independent work, published anonymously through an obscure bookseller [12-13]. Its implicit claim to authority is not based on a lifetime's creative work or a prestigious commission but, riskily, on the skill and argument of the poem alone. It offers a sort of master-class not only in doing….
An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope
Pope primarily used the heroic couplet, and his lines are immensely quotable; from "An Essay on Criticism" come famous phrases such as "To err is human; to forgive, divine," "A little learning is a dang'rous thing," and "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.". After 1718 Pope lived on his five-acre property at ...
An Essay on Criticism Summary
" An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope is a long, ... Pope was interested primarily in reinvigorating artistic styles, tropes, genres, and philosophy from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Other ...
Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism": An Introduction
Pope's "Essay on Criticism" is a didactic poem in heroic couplets, begun, perhaps, as early as 1705, and published, anonymously, in 1711. The poetic essay was a relatively new genre, and the "Essay" itself was Pope's most ambitious work to that time. It was in part an attempt on Pope's part to identify and refine his own positions as poet and ...
An Essay on Criticism Study Guide
About the Title. "An Essay on Criticism" is in the form of a rhyming poem, but its content is akin to a nonfiction essay detailing and supporting Pope's arguments about writers and critics. Alexander Pope wrote and translated many different types of literature, using poetic forms to express diverse content.
An Essay on Criticism Analysis
Analysis. Last Updated September 5, 2023. Alexander Pope 's long three-part poem "An Essay on Criticism" is largely influenced by ancient poets, classical models of art, and Pope's own ...
An Essay on Criticism: Part 1
An Essay on Criticism: Part 1 By Alexander Pope About this Poet The acknowledged master of the heroic couplet and one of the primary tastemakers of the Augustan age, British writer Alexander Pope was a central figure in the Neoclassical movement of the early 18th century. He is known for having perfected the rhymed couplet form of...
An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope
An Essay on Criticism Credits: Produced by Ted Garvin, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Language: English: LoC Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature: Subject: Criticism Subject: Poetry -- Early works to 1800 Category: Text: EBook-No. 7409: Release Date: Feb 1, 2005: Most Recently Updated: Feb 7, 2015 ...
An Essay on Criticism
Overview. Alexander Pope wrote An Essay on Criticism shortly after turning 21 years old in 1711. While remaining the speaker within his own poem Pope is able to present his true viewpoints on writing styles both as they are and how he feels they should be. While his poetic essay, written in heroic couplets, may not have obtained the same status ...
An Overview of An Essay on Criticism
Nature constitutes and functions as "the Source, and End, and Text of art". (An Overview of An Essay on Criticism) To acquire a better judgement and redefined taste of Literature depends on Nature, which is "just", "unerring", "divinely bright", "clear" and "universal". Any art that fails to reflect nature is not worth ...
An Essay on Criticism Themes
The themes in "An Essay on Criticism" are the principles of artistic greatness and the pursuit of poetry as a life-long endeavor. The principles of artistic greatness: Pope discusses the qualities ...
from An Essay on Criticism
A poem's central idea, often developed into an extended metaphor, is known as a conceit. Unlocking the first couplet should provide you the key to Pope's conceit in An Essay on Criticism. Pope begins with a warning that: A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: The Pierian Spring is an important ...
[PDF] An essay on criticism
An essay on criticism. History. Alexander Pope published this poem in 1711, but, on the manuscript copy that he gave to the printer (see below), he says that it was ?Written in the Year 1709,? and it is likely that some parts of it date to a couple of years earlier, when Pope was still in his teens. By 1711, Pope had become well known in the ...
Ballad Criticism, Genre Theory, and the Dismantling of Rhetoric
We can understand that what is the surface text in one genre (Addison's commercial essay) becomes a subtext for another genre (his critical essay). ... Ballad Criticism, Genre Theory, and the Dismantling of Rhetoric. In: Rowlett, J.L. (eds) Transformations of a Genre. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print ...
An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope
Analysis (ai): This poem offers a critique of literary criticism and highlights the importance of personal taste and judgment. It acknowledges the prevalence of poor criticism, comparing it to faulty timepieces and stressing the rarity of true taste. The poet argues that while some possess a natural inclination towards judgment, false education can hinder their development.
Genre criticism
Genre criticism is a method within rhetorical criticism that analyzes texts in terms of their genre: the set of generic expectations, conventions, and constraints that guide their production and interpretation.In rhetoric, the theory of genre provides a means to classify and compare artifacts in terms of their formal, substantive and contextual features.
Genre Criticism
While Campbell and Jamieson are featured in our article on Presidential Communication Research, their work in Genre Criticism is similarly foundational to Communication Studies. Indeed, Campbell and Jamieson's (1978) book - and their introductory essay to the book - "Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action" further delineated genre ...
Understanding Genre and Genre Analysis
Genre analysis: A tool used to create genre awareness and understand the conventions of new writing situations and contexts. This a llows you to make effective communication choices and approach your audience and rhetorical situation appropriately. Basically, when we say "genre analysis," that is a fancy way of saying that we are going to look at similar pieces of communication - for example a ...
ENGL 1312 Genre Analysis Assignment
Genre Analysis Essay. Genre Analysis preliminary draft due 2/3/10 at 1:30 pm. Genre Analysis final draft due 2/17/10 1:30 p.m. To deepen our understanding of discourse community concepts, we will analyze both traditional and multimedia documents as genres. A genre is a form of communication such as a book, a billboard, or a blog.
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