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Pope and the Stage Metaphor

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Pope and the Stage Metaphor POPE AND THE STAGE METAPHOR By RICHARD FRANCIS ATNALLY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA June, 1967 UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA illlillllliliilillliillill 3 1262 08552 4063 . Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance which I ha.ve received from the members of my supervisoiy committee. Professor Robert H. Bowers^ and Professor Harold A. Wilson. To Professor Aubrey L. VJilliam.s, I owe the debt of the scholarly example and unfailing kindness which enabled m.e to begin a.nd complete this dissertation. Finally, I thank my wife^ Mary^ simply for her love ii Preface The subject of this study is Pope's use of stage metaphor^ and my thesis is that the stage metaphor and imagery which appear throughout Pope's v.'orks reflect traditional Christian humanist concerns v.'ith man's failure to recognize his own lim_itations . More particularly^ I argue that in the Dune i ad Pope employs stage ima.gery to satirize those contemporary scientific miniennialist concepts which tended to transform the traditional Christian view of the dram.a of human salvation into the eighteenth-century concept of man's natural perfectibility. Since Pope's employment of theatrical imagery contains ontological and moral im.plications inextricably linked to earlier significances of the idea of the world as a stage, the first two chapters of this study examine the larger meanings of the classical, m.edieval, Penaissance, and seventeenth-century uses of the w:^rld-stage concept. Chapters I and II show how the trope of man the cosmic a.ctor functioned as a.n intricate symbolic construct for views of man's place in the universe--in a world of evanescent joys and mutable fortunes, of masking deceits and external values, man's existence was linked to the iii "sham," and "ourward" reality of the hurnarx actor's exist- ence for various ethical purposes. A basic idea in the traditional use of the idea of the v;orld as a theatrum mundl v;as that man v;as to act out a divinely assigned role on God's stage; that role received, however, differing ontological and moral emphases in the varous formulations of the world-stage concept. In the ethical perspective of the Platonist and the Stoic, which emphasized man's grandeur as an essentially spiritual-rational being, man misplayed his proper role by failing to transcend his "lower," anim.al nature through a lack of spiritual and rational self-perfection. In introducing the nevi properties of Grace and Sin onto the cosmic stage, Christianity envisioned human existence as a brief, divinely plotted drama in which man the sinner played on a probationary stage, and was tested by God for his fitness for eternal salvation. And in the Christian viev/ of man's dual state of grandeur and misere , man v;as seen continually misplaying his proper role through lack of proper self-knowledge of his own fallen, but redeemable condition. As both the son of Adam and the heir of heaven, the Christian acted out his "true" part in God's drama by recognizing his own imperfections and by trusting divine wisdom to lead him to his goal of salvation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries important alterations in the Christian view of man iv ^ gradually arose as the result of a nev; optimism over human capabilities ^ an optimism v.'hich stemmied primarily from Platonic emphasis on man as being essentially a spiritual-rational creature. In the v/orlcs of such Platonists as Juan Vives, Henry More and Thomas Burnet the world-stage concept came to reflect the idea of man's pov/er to progressively transcend his "lower," animal affinities; and in More's a.nd Burnet's scientific millennialist v/orks, this idea received unique expression in their notions that the basic "plot" of the divine drama involved new earthly "scenes" of man's destined spiritual-rational perfection. Burnet, furthermore, presented a radically ne\»/ vision of the Christian drama of salvation by equating man's supposed spiritual progress towards a millennial kingdom of the just on earth with nan's increasing natural advances in scientific knowledge. Throughout this same period, hovrever, such Christian humanists as Erasmus, Thomas More and Shakespeare also used the world-stage concept to retain m.ore traditional Christian views of man's inherited perplexities and frailties in the divine theatre. Chapter III shows how the stage metaphor v;hich appears in Pope's works is closely linked to these latter Christian hum.anist views of man's innate limitations on God's stage. More specifically. Chapter III attempts to demonstrate hov/ Pope's stage imagery in the first three books of the Dune lad is subtly forinulated to reveal the dangers inherent in Burnet's scientific millenniallst concept of man's new destiny of perfection in the divine drama. Through an artful use of stage metaphor by which activities on the lesser v/orld of the London pantoffiim.ic "show" reveal man's refusal to play his proper role in the greater cosmic "showr" in God's theatre,, Pope suggests the idea of a nev/ perverse plot of progress in the cosmic "show"--Bulness ' s destined^ and perverse, moral and social advance towards a new mechanistic and egocentric order. And Pope's theatrical depiction of this progress, with its m.ajor "scenes" of the conflagration-like uncrea- tion of the world and recreation of a "new world" of the "Kingdom of the Dull upon Earth-," is shown to contain an intricate parody of Burnet's notion of man's intellectual- scientific progress tovjards perfection. Chapter IV shows hovr Pope further uses theatrical imagery in the fourth book of the Dune i ad to reinforce his attacks on Burnet, and thus produces a rich and unified satire on the v;idespread scientific progressivist tendencies of his own day. Throughout the Dune i ad , as in all of his other works. Pope utilized the traditional view of the world as a stage as an emblem of man's proper place in divine order; and at the close of this poem, the last of his works, we see man's prideful attempt to transcend his assigned role on God's stage as that xvhich ushers in universal darkness. vi Contents Aclcnov;ledgments ii Preface iii One Players on the Cosmic Stage 1 Two Ne^^f Scenes on the Cosmic Stags 40 Three The Brave "Nevj World" of Pope's Dime i ad 77 Four The Curtain Falls on the Divine Stage l45 Works Cited 196 vii One: Flayers on the Cosmic Stage The central thesis of this study is that Pope employs theatrical imagery in the Dunciad (17^3) to attack scien- tific millennialist ideas v/hich were helping to usher in the eighteenth-century doctrine of man's natural perfect- ibility. In The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), Carl L. Becker showed that a crucial part of the process v/hereby such eighteenth-century philosophers as Voltaire and Diderot "demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with 1 more up-to-date materials," consisted in revising the tra- ditional Christian view of man's role on the stage of the v/orld. Noting that the medieval Christian regarded human existence as a "cosmic dram.a," composed by God "according 2 to a central theme," Becker wrote of the Christian concept of man's part in the drama: Although created perfect, man had through dis- obedience fallen from grace into sin and error, thereby incurring the penalty of eternal damnation. Yet happily a v/ay of atonement and salvation had been provided through the propitiatory sacrifice of God's only begotten son. Helpless in them- selves to avert the just vjrath of God, men v;ere yet to be permitted, through his mercy, and by humility and obedience to his v/ill, to obtain pardon for sin and error. Life on earth was but a means to this desired end, a temporary proba- tion for the testing of God's children. 3 Further on in his study Becker pointed out hox'.' the eighteenth- -1- 2- century philosophers claimed "that the Christian version of the drama was a false and pernicious one," and sought to displace the Christian version by "recasting it and 4 bringing it up to date." In revising the divine drama, philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot transformed the idea of Divine Providence into the idea of the autom.atic processes of "natural law," and the Christian concept of spiritual salvation in the City of God into the concept of man's natural urogress towards perfection in a historical 5 Utopia on earth. Recent studies have stressed the cardin.al place seventeenth and eighteenth-century notions of a future "scientific" millennial kingdom on earth played in this revision: in the vrorks of such scientific progres- sivists as Thomas Burnet, for example, man's spiritual salvation was recast into an automatic process of intel- lectual progress towards perfection in the new millennial world, a process which was depicted by Burnet, in the graphic terms of drama, as the basic plot in man's destiny on the divine stage . In his discussion of the theatrical elements in the Dunciad , Aubrey Williams has demionstrated hov; "Pope's theatrical representation of a world of Dulness . exists primarily to mirror and measure the broad moral and 6 . cultural upheaval of his own tim.e " And Pope's theatrical depiction of a "new world" of "the Kingdoin of the Dull upon Earth " satirizes, we will argue, scientific millennialist distortions of the traditional Christian viev; of man's role .
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