Analysis Of Alexander Pope s The Enlightenment

‘The Enlightenment’ is defined as a period, popularly confined to the eighteenth century, wherein scientific knowledge and method proliferated under the belief that all knowledge is achievable by man. Opening the gateway to modern philosophy, ‘The Enlightenment’ aimed to explore the nature of human existence, being dubbed as an age of reason. ‘Reason’ is defined as man’s judgement that is, as Creighton explains, ‘held in mind by one who would be freed from the bondage of the emotions’ and must, therefore, differentiate his own reason from the ‘hinderance’ that is feeling , abandoning all sense of morality gained through religion and other environmental aspects. Creighton suggests ‘the excellence of reason is supposed to consist in its†¦show more content†¦In Rasselas, however, Johnson highlights the brutality of man through the kidnapping of Pekuah wherein she witnesses the immorality of slavery o n her journey for happiness, highlighting how the corruption of man lies beyond the safe-haven of Happy Valley. The valley itself is comparable to the Garden of Eden with ‘its evils extracted and excluded.’ However, the connotations of a valley present it as claustrophobic and locked-in, exacerbated by Rasselas’ initial futile attempts to escape. This suggests that while corruption lies beyond the valley, Johnson implies that the nature of man is to reach beyond our own limits regardless of current position, supported by the ‘Original Sin’ wherein Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden in the pursuit of the tree of knowledge. Whilst the paradise of the Happy Valley supplies all manners of ‘pleasure’ Rasselas uses his reason to determine that there must be more to his purpose, comparing the needs of man to that of animals and how they ‘waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds’3 and concludes that ‘ma n has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification.’ Rasselas therefore separates all he has been raised to believe in order to explore his own purpose – the very definition of reason. Pope can be seen to do the same when describing the ‘lamb [†¦] had he not reason, would he skip or play?’ distinguishing the purpose of the primal animals from that of man. Pope’s reason is alsoShow MoreRelatedLiterature Analysis Essay703 Words   |  3 PagesLiterature Analysis Noah Serna Western Governors University Humanities C100 January 15, 2016 Personal Observations of the Work The work of literature that I chose to do my initial observations on is a poem written by Phillis Wheatley, called â€Å"To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing his Works.† This poem was written during the enlightenment period. I particularly chose this poem because I always had an interest in reading about AfricanRead MoreFranklin: Puritan or Enlightenment? Essay868 Words   |  4 PagesIs Franklin a Puritan or Enlightenment Thinker About Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin came from a very simple Calvinist background. Ha dad little formal education, but he made it through his own efforts and became a rare genius in human history. 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