Pope's "An Essay on Man" can be read as a conscious consideration of the idea of ​​formal systems, both at the level of the poem and of the world. Pope moves philosophically from the lowest to the highest levels of being and back again, tracing these hierarchies through a series of rhyming iambic pentametric couplets Although this structure is not noteworthy in itself, as it is a common phenomenon in the work of Pope, gains meaning when considered in the context of the poem's subject matter. The concept of hierarchy, both as a cause of limitation and as a praise of man's place in the world, comes into focus as Pope considers the boundaries of these hierarchies. and the ways in which a lower and a higher level could merge. To plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essayFor example, with the question “The lamb that your riot condemn to bleed today, / If he had your reason, would he leap and play" ?", Pope highlights the limited mental world of the lamb, and suggests that the limitation may, in this case, be intentional. Because of man's brutality, Pope argues, the lamb is better off in a state of ignorance; in this way he will not have to suffer the premonition of death. Such passages, Nuttall suggests, argue that "Man, so limited [to a particular state,] would never know that he was limited" (Nuttall 54), and as such raise the questions of hierarchy and knowledge within the poem . boundaries between lamb and man, between man and God, and so on, Pope attempts to understand the essence of particular hierarchies, as well as the possible transformation of one thing into the next. Far from espousing a quietist point of view, Pope seeks to understand the very nature of the world's distinctions, to juxtapose elements of different levels against each other and see what equation will result. His use of the couplet, rather than a list or other form, allows for the presence of chiasmus throughout the poem, with room for comparison or contrast of elements in each set of rhymes. Through the placement and grammatical connection of each of the four parts of the couplet, Pope places distinctions between concepts precisely at the level of the verse. Through the use of poetic representation, he is able to imagine the transformation of one being into the next, to move a creature from the lowest to the highest level of society through words. It is this poetic staging, Pope suggests, this particular structuring and breaking of the line, that allows for drastic departures from the world's traditionally upheld hierarchies. Describing and enacting transformations in the hierarchy of things, Pope uses his metaphor of concentric circles ("As the little pebble stirs the peaceful lake;/The center moves, a tight circle succeeds"), examining hierarchies at the smallest, most level reduced of the verse in the hope that they will radiate into the world of the poem. Pope's consistent use of the iambic pentameter couplet has often been discussed, with critics sometimes disparaging the rigidity and formality that this verse form imposes. Whether or not the couplet represents a particular ideology (a matter discussed in Hunter's "Form as Meaning"), it is clear that its formal requirements must be carefully considered by the poet composing such relatively rigid verse. As Hunter notes in "Form as Meaning," "Absolute and unyielding loyalties or values ​​essential to the heroic couplet as a verse form may be impossible to establish, but appropriate expectations, patterns, inclinations, tendencies, and formal associations can all be described culturally." . " (Soccer player259). Because of the tradition arising from such a recognizable form, it is inevitable that a "canon" of heroic couplet poems has arisen, all with similar concerns regarding the particular constraints of the form. With little leeway in meter and even less in rhyme, the poet must choose those elements strategically, so that he can meet the requirements of the heroic couplet and have the freedom of expression he desires. While such a strategy clearly exists in other forms, such as the sonnet, the heroic couplet is unusual in that it has both open and closed elements. There is no fixed line length, fourteen or less, that offers the poet a prescribed place to end the poem. Because of this dichotomy, a strict limitation in rhyme and meter at the level of the pair, and the absence of any limitation of length but that of the poet's abilities: the heroic couplet poem requires that the poet have both the ability to work within strictly prescribed limits is the consideration of building these limited pairs into a self-regulated and self-sized whole. The form offers neither the freedom of vers libre nor the comfortable rules of long-form poetry; therefore, the poet must define the balance between regulation and freedom himself. Because of this open-closed dichotomy, the form already seems suited to a self-conscious questioning of itself. Since the form is, from the start, obvious to the reader, it is perhaps tempting for a writer to foreground this formal obviousness when constructing a poem of this kind. Yet Pope, writing "An Essay on Man", takes this question a step further, as he makes the concept of borders, the open and closed nature of hierarchies, the very object of his poetry. Hunter calls Pope “a conscious worker in the couplet tradition” (Hunter 266); as such, he seems to have transferred his knowledge of the limits of that tradition into questioning those of the world. The form of the poem supports this question, as it allows two sets of pairs to be placed next to each other – if nothing else, to be visualized in the space of the poem as they would not normally be in the world. Hunter argues that Pope is not only able to visualize his terms through this poetic form, but is in fact able to suggest a sense of causality: "Each couplet implies a structure of four fundamental units divided rhetorically by a caesura and syntactically by some crucial grammatical relationship involving cause/effect..." (Hunter 267). In this way, Hunter argues, the four "fundamental units" are both separate, in the sense that caesura and punctuation divide them, and are brought together, in that a "crucial grammatical relation" links their terms. Through this statement, Hunter seems to assert not only that the form itself favors claims of causation and comparison, but also that Pope's particular use of English grammar further links them. For example, in Epistle I, the lines "When the Ox dull, for now he breaks the sod,/ Now he is victim, and now God of Egypt" (I., 63-4) not only proposes a rigorous progression of events , but even moves the image of the ox through a series of philosophical and mythological transformations. In the first part (first half of the first verse), the ox is simply "blunt" and presumably immobile; although the tense marker "when" is given, there is no verb, and one can characterize the ox only through the adjective "boring". This initial characterization marks perhaps the least dramatic of a series of transformations, in which the reader's expectations will be radically shifted in the space of the two lines. In the second part, for example (the second half of the first line), the characterization hasthey become dramatic and full of movement – ​​not only through the interjection “why,” which suggests surprise as well as conjunction, but also through direct word order, the strong action verb “breaks,” and the extremely present adverb “ now". Through this adverb, Pope shifts the transition from describing an instance, “when,” to a particular, contemporary moment in time, “now.” The “now” forces the reader to reconsider the ox, who was previously characterized only as “boring,” as a creature that makes strong movements in the present time. The presence and immediacy of the accents also changes, from two in the first half line to three in the second, and from a vague or secondary accent in the first (perhaps on "When" and "obtuse") to a very articulated accent and sense of accent regular in the second (strong emphasis on "now", "breaks" and "clod"). The meter went from uncertain and partially accented in the first to completely regular in the second, reflecting not only the completion of an iambic pentametric line, but, more significantly, the difference in metrical description of the first two parts. One might perhaps also consider the meaning of the "breaks" in the second half line; although used to refer to the ox, it is possible that it also refers to the poet, and the "breaking" occurs not only of the clod, but also of the verse. If this theory of enacted metaphor is continued, it might suggest that the poet himself is implicitly compared to the ox: dull in the first half of the line and then, when the break and turning of the line occurs, transformed into an active and transformative being. Indeed, since Latin versus comes from the turning of the plow, this self-reflexive metaphor has a basis in the language itself. The line cuts off immediately after “now break the sod,” implementing what might at first have been considered merely descriptive terms. Whether or not this metaphor is borne out by the reader's ear, it at least appears that Pope transforms the figure of the ox from a state of "boring" stasis into a more exciting and consequential one, as he goes through the action of breaking. The placement of these two terms, "part one" and "part two", directly next to each other and separated by a comma, allows them to be considered as equivalences, not necessarily equal terms, but terms whose equality derives, through their location in question. Reading the two terms, one after the other, one is struck by the dramatic movement from one state to the other. Likewise, in terms three and four, an equally clear transformation occurs. Both terms include, by parallelism, the existential verb “is”; both also contain the word "now" and the sense that the ox is being renamed. Due to the structural similarities between the two parts, one might initially assume that the clear distinction between the first and second parts does not occur here. The meter also remains relatively regular and iambic, rather than going from less to more regular as in parts one and two. However, the parallelism of parts three and four allows for a different kind of transformation: based not on a difference in sentence structure, but rather on the violence of the renamed animal. The phrase is not structured on the difference between the "dumb" ox and the clod-breaking ox, but rather on the opposition between the ox's status as "victim" and that of "God of Egypt." The opposition is as dramatic as one can imagine, and can be said to parallel, in more drastic terms, that of the first two parts. The victim ox is the one who has been beaten, who is inactive due to a stronger force; the ox as God of Egypt is the one who triumphed, conquered the hearts and minds of people, and achieved the status of deity. Taken alone, these two sentences force the reader to consider onesimple opposition between the two; taken together, however, they force the reader to establish a philosophical and chronological connection between the two. Pope's use of the word "now" twice in this verse creates a sense of not only contemporaneity and spontaneity - "now" this happens, and "now" this happens, as if the author couldn't pronounce the words quite quickly - but also the feeling that the author is omnipotent, capable of making the impossible real through the use of his pen. The use of the double "now" suggests that the author has the power to create the ox again, perhaps not in physical reality, but at least in the mind of the perceived audience. or that the ox, perhaps through the breaking of the sod, has become actually transformed from a victim into a divinity, or that the author, with his use of the adverb that marks the time, has the ability to create him as such. The perception of the animal changes as Pope moves from the third to the fourth part; perhaps a change in perception is all that is needed to re-imagine the ox as a god. Through the use of “now,” Pope allows the reader to follow along as he makes this change; in fact, through the proximity of parts three and four, Pope suggests that almost no time is needed for change to occur. Furthermore, since this line involves only the verb "is," the reader is invited to contrast it with the previous line, in which an action verb occurs. There is, Pope suggests, a relationship based on the analogy between the dull ox and the ox as god of Egypt, and alternately between the sod-breaking ox and the victim. Although this relationship is not made explicit, it seems that, based on Pope's use of enactment above, he implies that the action itself is transformative, that it is the breaking of the sod that allows the ox to become grander. To follow the metaphor of enactment, this suggests that it is the poet's work itself that causes the change, the writing of "now" and "now" again that forces the reader to consider the concepts in a new way. The ox is not physically recreated in three different forms; rather, it is the poet's lines that, through juxtaposition, force this recreation to occur. Indeed, as the ox goes from being "boring" to "breaking the clod" to "victim" to "God of Egypt," it seems to be undergoing a parallel transformation in both lines. The ox is transformed from a dull, passive object to an active force, and from a victim, one of the lowest states of society, to one of the highest, like the god of Egypt. This rapid, seemingly miraculous transformation becomes credible when created poetically by the author himself; if the reader's perception is made to change with every sentence the author makes after "now". Without necessarily proposing hierarchies, Pope suggests them implicitly through the very pairing of images he selects. A seemingly simple couplet, when examined, expands to reveal the author's insistence on the transformative properties of his own hand. While the terms themselves may not be of particular importance, they help reveal consideration of the process of juxtaposition itself, and thus gain importance as terms of a logical argument. For example, Hunter argues that “the closed couplet tends to privilege balance itself – the preservation and acceptance of difference rather than an elaboration of modification or compromise” (Hunter 266) and Nuttall, in Pope's Essay on Man , suggests that "it is best to speak of the elements of the line as positions which can be variously occupied" (Nuttall 21). Considering the verse, therefore, it seems that an explicit comment by the Pope may not be necessary to compare the elements. The form itself looks like a kind of argument, the logic of which allows pairs of premises and,.