'Th'Extended Dream': Pope's Play with Sexual and Textual Instabilities, 1705-1737

Abstract

Pope's poems about love have a recurrent motif: a male lover, powerful but otherwise absent, appears in a dream. In the ‘Pastorals’, ‘Sapho to Phaon’, The Rape of the Lock, ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, ‘Ode to Venus’, and To Arbuthnot, this lover focuses the presentation of an inner life at odds with the everyday. His frequent appearance expresses a sexual ambivalence supported by the complex publication of these poems. Pope plays with gender identification in different forms of double utterance: manuscript circulation and print publication; rival printings; textual revision; and interplay between the texts and their sources or rival translations.

Citation

(2017). 'Th'Extended Dream': Pope's Play with Sexual and Textual Instabilities, 1705-1737. Modern Language Review, 822-841. https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.112.4.0822

• Acceptance Date: Apr 5, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2017
• Journal: Modern Language Review
• Print ISSN: 0026-7937
• Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
• Pages: 822-841
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.112.4.0822
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.112.4.0822