Beatus Ille: Pope and the Mythos of Retirement

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter in a book

Abstract

“Beatus Ille: Pope and the Mythos of Retirement” examines and illustrates the many ways in which images of retirement pervade the poetry of Pope. The essay considers the complex, often fanciful, play between the myth of a contented retreat from the busy world derived from Horace and from Pope’s poetical predecessors such as Cowley and Dryden, and the actual sources of the “happy” state that Pope achieved in his middle and later years. Pope’s “Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot,” his “Windsor Forest” and even “The Epistle to a Lady” conjure notions of society placed at a distance, or left behind in old age. In practice, while Pope cultivated the idea of retirement pleasures with great elegance and wit, he remained driven by a creative restlessness that ceased only with death.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPope's Mythologies
Subtitle of host publicationAlexander Pope and Myth in the Early British Enlightenment
EditorsA.D. Cousins, Daniel Derrin
Place of PublicationNew York and London
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter7
Pages115-132
Number of pages17
Volume1
Edition1
ISBN (Print)9781032064536
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Publication series

NameRoutledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature
PublisherRoutledge
Number1
Volume1

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