an essay on criticism summary sparknotes

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

• See where this theme is active in the poem.

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

• See where this symbol appears in the poem.

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

Alliteration.

• See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

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

Ode on Solitude

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

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)

Share this:

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Alexander Pope , Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism , Alexander Pope as a Neoclassical Poet , Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , An Essay on Criticism , An Essay on Criticism as a Neoclassical Poem , Analysis of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Analysis of An Essay on Criticism , Bibliography of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Bibliography of An Essay on Criticism , Character Study of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Character Study of An Essay on Criticism , Criticism of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Criticism of An Essay on Criticism , English Literature , Essays of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Essays of An Essay on Criticism , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Neoclassical Poetry , Neoclassicism in Poetry , Notes of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Notes of An Essay on Criticism , Plot of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Plot of An Essay on Criticism , Poetry , Simple Analysis of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Simple Analysis of An Essay on Criticism , Study Guides of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Study Guides of An Essay on Criticism , Summary of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Summary of An Essay on Criticism , Synopsis of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Synopsis of An Essay on Criticism , Themes of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism , Themes of An Essay on Criticism

Related Articles

• Analysis of Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man | Literary Theory and Criticism

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

British Literature Wiki

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).

To uncover the deeper meaning of An Essay on Criticism click here

Back to Alexander Pope

François Voltaire

• Literature Notes
• Alexander Pope's Essay on Man
• Book Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Chapters II-III
• Chapters IV-VI
• Chapters VII-X
• Chapters XI-XII
• Chapters XIII-XVI
• Chapters XVII-XVIII
• Chapter IXX
• Chapters XX-XXIII
• Chapters XXIV-XXVI
• Chapters XXVII-XXX
• Francois Voltaire Biography
• Critical Essays
• The Philosophy of Leibnitz
• Poème Sur Le Désastre De Lisoonne
• Other Sources of Influence
• Structure and Style
• Satire and Irony
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays Alexander Pope's Essay on Man

The work that more than any other popularized the optimistic philosophy, not only in England but throughout Europe, was Alexander Pope's  Essay on Man  (1733-34), a rationalistic effort to justify the ways of God to man philosophically. As has been stated in the introduction, Voltaire had become well acquainted with the English poet during his stay of more than two years in England, and the two had corresponded with each other with a fair degree of regularity when Voltaire returned to the Continent.

Voltaire could have been called a fervent admirer of Pope. He hailed the Essay of Criticism as superior to Horace, and he described the Rape of the Lock as better than Lutrin. When the Essay on Man was published, Voltaire sent a copy to the Norman abbot Du Resnol and may possibly have helped the abbot prepare the first French translation, which was so well received. The very title of his Discours en vers sur l'homme (1738) indicates the extent Voltaire was influenced by Pope. It has been pointed out that at times, he does little more than echo the same thoughts expressed by the English poet. Even as late as 1756, the year in which he published his poem on the destruction of Lisbon, he lauded the author of Essay on Man. In the edition of Lettres philosophiques published in that year, he wrote: "The Essay on Man appears to me to be the most beautiful didactic poem, the most useful, the most sublime that has ever been composed in any language." Perhaps this is no more than another illustration of how Voltaire could vacillate in his attitude as he struggled with the problems posed by the optimistic philosophy in its relation to actual experience. For in the Lisbon poem and in Candide , he picked up Pope's recurring phrase "Whatever is, is right" and made mockery of it: "Tout est bien" in a world filled with misery!

Pope denied that he was indebted to Leibnitz for the ideas that inform his poem, and his word may be accepted. Those ideas were first set forth in England by Anthony Ashley Cowper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1731). They pervade all his works but especially the Moralist. Indeed, several lines in the Essay on Man, particularly in the first Epistle, are simply statements from the Moralist done in verse. Although the question is unsettled and probably will remain so, it is generally believed that Pope was indoctrinated by having read the letters that were prepared for him by Bolingbroke and that provided an exegesis of Shaftesbury's philosophy. The main tenet of this system of natural theology was that one God, all-wise and all-merciful, governed the world providentially for the best. Most important for Shaftesbury was the principle of Harmony and Balance, which he based not on reason but on the general ground of good taste. Believing that God's most characteristic attribute was benevolence, Shaftesbury provided an emphatic endorsement of providentialism.

Following are the major ideas in Essay on Man: (1) a God of infinite wisdom exists; (2) He created a world that is the best of all possible ones; (3) the plenum, or all-embracing whole of the universe, is real and hierarchical; (4) authentic good is that of the whole, not of isolated parts; (5) self-love and social love both motivate humans' conduct; (6) virtue is attainable; (7) "One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT." Partial evil, according to Pope, contributes to the universal good. "God sends not ill, if rightly understood." According to this principle, vices, themselves to be deplored, may lead to virtues. For example, motivated by envy, a person may develop courage and wish to emulate the accomplishments of another; and the avaricious person may attain the virtue of prudence. One can easily understand why, from the beginning, many felt that Pope had depended on Leibnitz.

Previous The Philosophy of Leibnitz

Next Poème Sur Le Désastre De Lisoonne

Advertisement

Supported by

In the 2024 Race, Trump’s Trial Is About to Take Center Stage

The race for president will shift much of its focus to a Manhattan courtroom. “This looks like no other presidential campaign in the history of the country,” one Republican pollster said.

• Share full article

By Shane Goldmacher ,  Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman

Follow our live coverage of Trump’s hush money trial .

The start of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial on Monday thrusts the 2024 presidential race into uncharted territory and Mr. Trump back into the public spotlight in ways he hasn’t been since he left the White House more than three years ago.

There will be no cameras in the Manhattan courtroom. But Mr. Trump and the drama around him may be unavoidable as he goes on trial in a case that centers on a salacious hush-money payment made to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 election and that threatens the presumptive Republican nominee with potential jail time for 34 felony counts.

The trial will begin with perhaps the most scrutinized jury selection since the trial of O.J. Simpson three decades ago, and it will confine Mr. Trump to New York City for as many as four days a week for about eight weeks, and possibly more.

That would be roughly one-quarter of the calendar until the November election.

“This looks like no other presidential campaign in the history of the country,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who has worked on past presidential races. “It kind of puts the regular presidential campaign on sabbatical.”

Mr. Trump has told advisers he wants as much media coverage of his court appearances as possible and many supporters defending him on television, as the gravitational center of the campaign shifts away from the battleground states to a courtroom in Lower Manhattan. And he has deliberately created a circuslike atmosphere around his previous criminal arraignments, including by going straight from a Miami courthouse to a popular Cuban restaurant and, at his New York legal proceedings, by holding news conferences at his property at 40 Wall Street. He is likely to repeat that approach, according to an adviser.

“On Monday all hell breaks loose!” Mr. Trump wrote to supporters on Friday in a fund-raising email, asking for “peaceful patriotic support.”

He is expected to hold events around New York City, in parts of the boroughs outside of Manhattan that are more politically hospitable to him on days when he is not in court, and possibly on the evenings of those when he is. Day trips to battlegrounds for rallies are possible on Wednesdays, when the trial is scheduled to pause weekly, with advisers noting that Mr. Trump has a private plane.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Monday, with questionnaires probing prospective jurors’ opinions of Mr. Trump, what podcasts they listen to and even what news outlets they consume, as he sits in the courtroom, watching.

Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?

The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump is underway. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.

The case will also be a test for how the news media handles multiple days of potentially fast-moving developments around Mr. Trump. In one recent MSNBC segment, Michael Avenatti, the media-hungry attorney who once represented the porn star in the case, dialed in live from prison , where he is serving time on unrelated charges. Among the questions for people who program television: If Mr. Trump chooses to narrate the day’s developments in news conferences, will the networks carry it live?

President Biden and his campaign have taken a virtual vow of silence about the trial, seeing any remarks as potentially feeding Mr. Trump’s claims that this case and his three other indictments are part of a broader “election interference” scheme (there is no evidence that the White House played any role in his indictments in New York and elsewhere). But Biden advisers say they hope the trial will amplify their argument that the former president is running chiefly to help himself, including to stay out of prison.

The Biden and Trump campaigns both declined to comment.

The sheer focus on Mr. Trump and one of his criminal indictments could prove helpful for a Biden team that is pressing to make the 2024 contest as much about the predecessor as the president.

“Here’s the fundamental Trump messaging task right now,” said Pat Dennis, the president of a Democratic super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, that is planning to track the trial closely. “He has benefited from being outside the spotlight and we need to remind people what this guy was like, why voters were so sick of him.”

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, said the closest parallel would be the televised Jan. 6 congressional hearings of 2022 that drew nationwide attention — and that Republicans proudly tuned out and Democrats obsessed over.

A poll by The New York Times and Siena College just ahead of the trial showed that 58 percent of voters — and 54 percent of independents — viewed the charges as very or somewhat serious. But nearly one in five voters said they were unsure if he should be found guilty. Some public polling has shown that a small but significant bloc of voters could be swayed by a conviction.

Even some of Mr. Trump’s critics, both inside the Republican Party and among Democrats, have expressed worry that the Manhattan case is coming first, and could be the only trial held before the election. The concern is in part because Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the charges, is an elected Democrat, unlike the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith. But it is also because the accusations themselves are less sweeping and fundamental than the charges that Mr. Trump tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.

Of course, Mr. Trump himself could make a zoo of the proceedings. He will be compelled to sit and listen to Stormy Daniels, the former adult film star who has said she had a sexual relationship with him; Michael Cohen, his former fixer; and aides who worked closely with him testify about the affair and the resulting payment.

Mr. Trump has already showed little patience as a courtroom attendee, storming out of the court in the closing arguments of the E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse and defamation case and earning rebukes from the judge. A jury ultimately ordered Mr. Trump to pay more than $83 million to Ms. Carroll for defaming her after she accused him of rape.

“The X factor — I will call this a known unknown — he’s going to lose his mind,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have warned him repeatedly that he needs to try not to behave erratically in front of juries and that some judges will have him put in jail if he does.

An array of conservative activists with close ties to Mr. Trump and those in his orbit are planning trips to New York for daily protests and media appearances. The New York Young Republican Club plans to stage pro-Trump rallies in Collect Pond Park near the courthouse, according to the group’s executive secretary, Vish Burra, who said in an interview he had been coordinating with the New York Police Department on logistics.

Other Trump allies, such as the right-wing activist Laura Loomer, will be in New York to broadcast pro-Trump messages and attack the judge overseeing the case, Justice Juan M. Merchan, and the judge’s daughter, who has consulted for Democrats. Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, whose “War Room” podcast has a huge following among hard-line activists, will have correspondents, including Ms. Loomer, on the scene.

Ms. Loomer does not work for Mr. Trump but she has flown with him on his plane and met with him at his private clubs. He frequently encourages her attacks against his perceived enemies, including her online posting about Justice Merchan’s daughter.

“We have to raise awareness about this banana republic witch hunt against President Trump,” Ms. Loomer said in an interview. “I will have my bullhorn. I will have my camera crew. I will have my Trump gear and I will have a staff writer.”

Mike Davis, a lawyer and Trump ally who is expected to appear with Ms. Loomer on Mr. Bannon’s show, said, “When judges and prosecutors enter the political ring, they should expect political punches.”

Even before the trial, Mr. Trump has almost dared Justice Merchan to sanction him. In early April, the judge expanded his gag order to prevent the former president from attacking not just witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff but also relatives of the judge and Mr. Bragg. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Cohen on social media.

Mr. Trump has accused the judge of violating the Constitution with his gag order. “If this Partisan Hack wants to put me in the ‘clink’ for speaking the open and obvious TRUTH, I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site, comparing himself to the anti-apartheid activist in South Africa.

In the Republican primary, Mr. Trump repeatedly showed he could turn his legal jeopardy into political advantage. His strongest fund-raising day was when his mug shot was taken when he was booked in Atlanta. Donations similarly surged when he was first indicted in New York.

It is less clear what his claims of victimhood will do in a general election, with polling showing some swing voters declining to vote for Mr. Trump if he is convicted.

Mr. Biden has not engaged publicly with the case’s specifics. But his advisers are setting up a schedule for him to be in battleground states, sharpening the contrast with the courtroom-confined Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden will hold five events over a three-day stretch in Pennsylvania this week as jury selection begins.

Shane Goldmacher is a national political correspondent, covering the 2024 campaign and the major developments, trends and forces shaping American politics. He can be reached at [email protected] . More about Shane Goldmacher

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

News and Analysis

Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan took a startling turn when two jurors were abruptly excused , demonstrating the challenge of picking citizens to determine the fate of a former president.

Prosecutors argued in court that with a steady stream of social media posts, Trump had violated the gag order  imposed on him seven times, urging the judge overseeing the trial to hold him in contempt.

Our reporter joined “The Daily” to explain what happened during the opening days  of the trial against Donald Trump.

More on Trump’s Legal Troubles

Key Inquiries: Trump faces several investigations  at both the state and the federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers.

Case Tracker:  Keep track of the developments in the criminal cases  involving the former president.

What if Trump Is Convicted?: Will any of the proceedings hinder Trump’s presidential campaign? Here is what we know, and what we don’t know .

Trump on Trial Newsletter: Sign up here  to get the latest news and analysis  on the cases in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C.

Read Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks' prologue, epilogue to 'The Tortured Poets Department'

As she has with previous albums, Taylor Swift gifted fans with a prologue , adding contextual clues to help unlock “ The Tortured Poets Department ."

Only this time, there's a prologue and an epilogue.

For the opening of “TTPD,” Swift mentor and muse Stevie Nicks , whose handwritten, untitled poem (other than deeming it “for T … and me”) prefaces the 16 songs on the album.

According to Nicks’ notes, the poem was started Aug. 13, 2023 in Austin – she performed in the city two nights later – with a second time stamp of 8:50 p.m. Sept. 13.

“She was on her way to the stars. He didn’t say goodbye,” Nicks writes, an unsubtle reference to the broken relationship that fuels Swift’s new album.

While Nicks’ words are primarily aimed at Swift, it’s impossible not to read into Nicks’ history and tempestuous relationship with long-ago love and former bandmate Lindsey Buckingham with lines such as: “She was just flying thru the clouds where he saw her … she was just making her way – to the stars – when he lost her.”

Taylor Swift explains 'The Tortured Poets Department'

If fans aren’t left in a puddle after absorbing the emotional blows on Swift’s 11th album, they’ll next be confronted with an essay – or, rather, a summation – from Swift, writing from her position as The Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department.

Her “debrief” is a cryptic explanation of the content.

“As you might all unfortunately recall, I had been struck with a case of a restricted humanity,” she writes. “Which explains my plea here today of temporary insanity.”

As Swift writes about "lovers" who "spend years denying what’s ill fated," likely referring to her relationship with Joe Alwyn. Later, in a line that will have fans speculating on if she's talking about Alwyn or Matty Healy, she says, "I was out of the oven and into the microwave."

No matter who she's writing about, "He never even scratched the surface of me. None of them did.”

Then, with Swiftian style, she proclaims, “A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face because it’s the worst men that I write best.”

How long have Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks been friends?

The mutual admiration society between Swift and Nicks can be traced to 2010, when the pair shared the stage at the Grammy Awards (the performance was not universally beloved ) and later that year, when Nicks penned an essay about the burgeoning superstar for Time magazine .

“Taylor reminds me of myself in her determination and childlike nature,” Nicks wrote. “This girl writes the songs that make the whole world sing, like Neil Diamond or Elton John.”

The most Taylor Swift song ever: 'I Can Do it With a Broken Heart' (track 13 on 'TTPD')

Zip ahead 13 years and Nicks found new reason to be touched by Swift’s work.

Following the late 2022 death of Christine McVie , Fleetwood Mac keyboardist and one of Nicks’ dearest friends, Nicks spoke often about how Swift’s “Midnights” track, “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” brought her comfort as she grieved her friend.

In May 2023, Nicks shared during a live show in Atlanta, “The two of us were on our own, kids. We always were. And now, I’m having to learn to be on my own, kid, by myself.”

Read on for the full text of the prologue and epilogue to 'The Tortured Poets Department':

For T and me… by Stevie Nicks

He was in love with her

Or at least she thought so

She was broken hearted

Maybe he was too

Neither of them knew.

She was way too hot to handle

He was way too high to try

He couldn’t even see her

He wouldn’t open his eyes

She was on her way to the stars

He didn’t say goodbye

She looked back from her future

And shed a few tears

He looked into his past

And actually felt fear.

For both of them

The answers would never be

Don’t ask questions now

Do that later

She brings joy

He brings Shakespeare

It’s almost a tragedy

Don’t endanger me

He really can’t answer her

He’s afraid of her

He’s hiding from her

And he knows that he’s hurting her

She tells the truth

She writes about it

She’s an informer

He’s an X-lover

There’s nothing there for her

She’s already gone

There’s nothing that can stop her

She was just flying

thru the clouds

Where he saw her

She was just making her way

To the stars

When he lost her…

In Summation: Summary Poem by Taylor Swift

At this hearing

I stand before my fellow members

of the Tortured Poets Department

With a summary of my findings

A debrief, a detailed rewinding

For the purpose of warning

For the sake of reminding

As you might all unfortunately recall

I had been struck with a case

of a restricted humanity

Which explains my plea here today

of temporary insanity

You see, the pendulum swings

Oh, the chaos it brings

Leads the caged beast to do

the most curious things

Lovers spend years denying what’s ill fated

Resentment rotting away

galaxies we created

Stars placed and glued

meticulously by hand

next to the ceiling fan

Tried wishing on comets.

Tried dimming the shine.

Tried to orbit his planet.

Some stars never align.

And in one conversation, I tore down the whole sky

Spring sprung forth with dazzling freedom hues

Then a crash from the skylight

Bursting through

Something old, someone hallowed,

who told me he could be brand new

And so I was out of the oven

And into the microwave

Out of the slammer and into a tidal wave

How gallant to save the empress

from her gilded tower

Swinging a sword he could barely lift

But loneliness struck at that fateful hour

Low hanging fruit on his wine stained lips

He never even scratched the surface

None of them did.

“In summation, it was not a love affair!”

I screamed while bringing my fists

to my coffee ringed desk

It was a mutual manic phase.

It was self harm.

It was house and then cardiac arrest.

A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face

Because it’s the worst men that I write best.

And so I enter into evidence

My tarnished coat of arms

My muses, acquired like bruises

My talismans and charms

The tick, tick, tick of love bombs

My veins of pitch black ink

All’s fair in love and poetry

The Chairman

of The Tortured Poets Department

An Essay on Man

30 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Epistle Summaries & Analyses

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Discussion Questions

Epistle 1 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Summary epistle 1: “of the nature and state of man with respect to the universe”.

Lines 1-16 are a dedication to Henry St. John, a friend of Pope’s. The speaker urges St. John to abandon the “meaner things” (Line 1) in life and turn his attention toward the higher, grander sphere by reflecting on human nature and God.

In section 1 (Lines 17-34), the speaker argues that humans cannot see the universe from God’s perspective . Therefore, people cannot understand the entirety of the universe. The universe is composed of “worlds unnumber’d” (Line 21); only God can see how everything is connected through “nice dependencies” (Line 30). The speaker compares these connections to a “great chain” (Line 33).

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

• 7,450+ In-Depth Study Guides
• 4,900+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
• Downloadable PDFs

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope

Eloisa to Abelard

The Dunciad

The Rape of the Lock

Featured Collections

Philosophy, Logic, & Ethics

View Collection

Religion & Spirituality

School Book List Titles

Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Analysis: Iran upends decades of shadow warfare in direct attack on Israel as tensions mount at home

A woman walks past an anti-Israeli banner on a building at the Felestin (Palestine) Square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 14, 2024. Israel on Sunday hailed its air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying the systems thwarted 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. The sign in Hebrew reads: “Your next mistake will be the end of your fake country.” The sign in Farsi reads: “The next slap will be harder.” (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Motorbikes cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 14, 2024. Israel on Sunday hailed its air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying the systems thwarted 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 14, 2024. Israel on Sunday hailed its air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying the systems thwarted 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Passengers use a BRT bus in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 14, 2024. Israel on Sunday hailed its air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying the systems thwarted 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

• Copy Link copied

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s direct attack on Israel over the weekend upended decades of its shadowy warfare by proxy, something Tehran has used to manage international repercussions for its actions. But with both economic and political tensions at home boiling, the country’s Shiite theocracy chose a new path as changes loom for the Islamic Republic.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will mark his 85th birthday Friday, with no clear successor in sight and still serving as the final arbiter of every decision Iran makes. Coming to power in the wake of Iran’s devastating eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, Khamenei preached for years about “strategic patience” in confronting his government’s main rivals, Israel and the United States, to avoid open combat.

That saw Iran invest more deeply in regional militia forces to harass Israel — such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip or Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia — and contain the U.S., like with the militias that planted devastating improvised explosives that killed American troops during the Iraq war. That’s extended even into impoverished Yemen, where Iran’s arming of the Houthi rebels empowered their takeover of the capital and checkmated a Saudi-led coalition still trapped in a yearslong war there.

That strategy changed Saturday. After days of warnings, Iran launched 170 bomb-carrying drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles toward Israel, according to an Israeli count. Those weapons included the same bomb-carrying drones Iran supplied to Russia for its grinding war on Ukraine.

Despite Israel and the U.S. describing 99% of those projectiles being shot down , Iran has called the attack a success. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Monday the attack was “to deter, punish and warn the Zionist regime.” Khamenei himself had called for Iran to “punish” Israel as well.

The trigger for the attack came April 1, when a suspected Israeli strike hit a consular annex building by Iran’s Embassy in Damascus, Syria , killing at least 12, including a top commander of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Forces.

However, for years, Iran and Israel have been targeting each other’s interests across the Middle East.

Israel is suspected of assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and sabotaging atomic sites in the Islamic Republic. In Syria, Israel has repeatedly bombed airports likely to interrupt Iranian weapons shipments, as well as killed other Guard officers. Meanwhile, Iran is suspected of carrying out a host of bombings and gun attacks targeting Jews and Israeli interests over the decades.

But the embassy attack struck a nerve with the Iranian government.

“Attacking our consulate is like attacking our soil,” Khamenei said April 10.

It also comes amid a moment filled with uncertainty for Iran. As Khamenei grows older, power has become ever-more consolidated in the country.

Hard-liners control every lever of power within both security services and political bodies, with none of the relative moderates who once shepherded Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers into existence.

That includes former President Hassan Rouhani, who led the effort. Authorities barred Rouhani earlier this year from running again to hold his seat on the Assembly of Experts, the 88-cleric body that will pick Iran’s next supreme leader.

The hard-liners’ grip on power has seen voter turnout drop to its lowest level since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Their stranglehold also leaves them as the only political faction to blame as the public remains incensed by Iran’s collapsing economy.

The nuclear deal’s demise, after former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, has seen Iran’s rial currency tumble. The rial now seesaws near record lows, trading Monday at 658,000 to the dollar — down from 32,000 at the time the agreement was reached nearly a decade ago.

Already, prosecutors in Tehran have begun a criminal investigation into the Jahan-e Sanaat newspaper and a journalist over a story on the possible economic impact of Iran’s attack on Israel. The judiciary’s Mizan news agency described the report as “disturbing the psychological security of society and making the country’s economic atmosphere turbulent.”

His case comes as other journalists and activists report being summoned by authorities, portending a new crackdown on any sign of dissent in the country.

There are also signs that authorities appear to be preparing for a new push at enforcing the country’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab, laws for women.

“The Tehran police — as in all other provinces — will start to confront all lawbreaking with regard to the hijab,” said Tehran police chief Brig. Gen. Abbas Ali Mohammadian, according to the semiofficial ISNA news agency.

Some women in Tehran still walk through the streets with their hair uncovered, a continued protest since the nationwide 2022 demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini , arrested by police for not wearing a hijab to their liking. United Nations investigators say Iran was responsible for Amini’s death and violently put down largely peaceful protests in a monthslong security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.

A new push for hijab enforcement may reignite that anger, particularly in Tehran. Meanwhile, rumors persist that the government may soon raise the country’s heavily subsidized gasoline prices. A price increase in 2019 grew into nationwide antigovernment protests that reportedly saw over 300 people killed and thousands arrested.

Those tensions, coupled with hard-liners’ grip on power and Khamenei’s age, signal more changes loom for the country. And while Iran said of its attack Saturday that “the matter can be deemed concluded” even before missiles reached Israel, that doesn’t mean there won’t be further retaliation from the country.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell , the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the Mideast and wider world since joining the AP in 2006.