Comparing Alexander Pope and Samuel Coleridge's Views on Life

Literary periods have a huge effect on the way authors express themselves throughout their writings. Every single literary era holds extremely different values to which each writer uses as a guideline for them throughout their writings. Some of the most well-known authors, Alexander Pope and Samuel Coleridge wrote during two completely different literary periods. Alexander Pope’s works mirrored the important values of the Enlightenment era, while Coleridge’s writings mirrored those of the Romantic era. Although these two authors both derive from completely different writing periods, you can spot intricate details that lead to similarities between the two. In the poem, An Essay On Man by Pope and Frost at Midnight by Coleridge many differences are easily spotted within the poem by the two authors, but many similarities are found within each poem.

Alexander Pope was just one of the many great poets that played a major role in the Enlightenment period. He had extreme influences on others throughout all of the poems that he wrote. Pope, Catholic, was born in London and was privately educated. He was born into a family with elderly parents, a nurse, and an aunt, growing up with four adult influences helped him gain lots of knowledge and insight that helped him create wise works. It is thought that since he was surrounded by so many adults and was very rarely surrounded by people other than his family, it created a negative effect on his social skills. He began expressing himself throughout all of his writings. His father was said to have been very gentle and was very respectful towards the three women’s beliefs and thoughts, some believe Pope’s father had very little voice in the household. The feminism shown throughout his writings is thought to have possibly came from his childhood background of growing up in a household with strong womanly influences. He was considered a very prominent poet in Europe and was well-known by everyone around him. His writings were very enjoyable and were considered to be very wise.

“The Enlightenment period was strictly defined as a period with interdisciplinary thought” (Milam & Parsons 3). During this time, your mind ruled over your heart. The majority of poets during this time focused on reason and using your knowledge to pursue your writings. They believed that everyone should be representative of one another rather than everyone having their own individualistic thoughts for themselves. Enlightenment writers believed in nature as always being orderly and that there should always be a system that everyone needs to follow. The belief of poetry at this time is that it should be “a mirror held up to nature.” Nature to them was like an orderly mathematical system, everything should be pleasing to the eye. It was viewed as containing the characteristics of those like a clock, very precise and put together with a lot of thought and time. Ideas were very detailed and thorough during the Enlightenment period. Study and tradition were huge, and it was believed tradition should always stay true to holding its value and continuing throughout the years to come. As far as religion is concerned, they believed in deism, the view that God derived from the universe. In Mosely’s, Alexander Pope’s an Essay on Man and Tribunalization, he argues that, “Pope’s optimism relies on a more or less “static” world, a world once created and thereafter functioning as a single system, and the ongoing miseries function only as offsets of other felicities” (Mosely 179). Pope believed that you need to take a step back and look at the general picture that all nature is good. Just as all Enlightenment writers believed, Pope strongly believed that passion without reason is extremely unfruitful. Reason is the source of everything. A general concept that without reason, a thought or writing is not complete.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a major author during the Romantic literary era. Coleridge was the youngest of fourteen children. He grew up very lonely and was extremely careful and skeptical about everything that he participated in. He sadly lost his father at the age of nine years old. After his father passed away he found a great school where he gained a great education and where he also met one of his lifelong friends, Charles Lamb. He started off doing very well in school at Cambridge, but he began to fail at completing his schoolwork, so he dropped out of college and enlisted himself in the Calvary. The only thing he was good at in the Calvary was writing love letters because he still wanted to pursue his artistic gift. He tried returning to college to finish his degree, but once again he had no drive to finish and he left Cambridge in 1794 with still no degree. He still pursued his goal of writing poetry by writing Lyrical Ballads with a very influential writer, William Wordsworth. Many believe that we should view Coleridge as a genius because of everything he accomplished despite all of the failures that he encountered along the way, showing everyone that anything is possible if you set your mind to it.

In the article, The Poem and the Book: Interpreting Collections of Romantic Poetry, Neil Fraistat states, “Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement” (Fraistat 2). Whenever writing, romantic poets focus on more than just knowledge and facts, they like to use what they may be feeling in their hearts and write with their emotions. They believe in writing from an individualistic point of view, whereas enlightenment writers wrote from a holistic point of view. Writers during this time agree that it is completely okay to take your ideas on something and run with it even though it may be completely different than those around you. Romantic writers believed that you must see nature as an experience. It must consume you and play a role in your everyday life. They believe that to be extremely successful in life, it is crucial to surround yourself with nature in all that you do. The works during this time were written with a multitude of inspirational values. It was thought that if you can achieve all of your dreams than your dreams are too small. It was seen better to have a poem that is unfinished but filled with lots of meaning behind the poem, rather than having a poem that is finished and written with no meaningful intentions. Romantic writers believed poetry should overtake you and tug at your heart as a reader. It should engulf you and take your whole soul. The Romantic time period was like the aeolian harp, an instrument that plays spontaneously without any planning. There should be more emotions behind a writing rather than logic. They all agree that there is no reason for poetry to be precise, but rather let it define who you are personally. Romantic poetry is still to this day extremely popular to read and write.

In Pope’s an Essay on Man, Pope strongly believes that every single person is exactly where they need to be. His poem strictly relates to God and how he believes that God has a divine plan for us. God is the wisest man and only he knows what is best for everyone. He writes with the hope that he can allow everyone reading his poem to grasp the beliefs of the world around them are living in. Pope wanted to venture out to write about a subject that was often looked down upon during his time. He wanted to have an opportunity to be able to express his thoughts on what he believes to be true between God and man. Pope wrote from his very unique beliefs and expressed what he believed about the hierarchy of life. He sought everyone’s approval and agreement towards his poems and often times whenever he wrote about topics like these, he was worried about how he was seen among others. He just wanted to maintain his title of being a great poet (Mosley 177). He shows the major characteristics of an Enlightenment writer by the way that he strongly pursues a vision and provides logic behind his beliefs. Enlightenment writers at the time believed in the watchmaker God, that God is the creator of everything in our Universe, and the reason we have the opportunity to enjoy nature is because of God. Pope definitely expressed the characteristics of a romantic poet throughout all of his works.

O’Gorman states, “Frost at Midnight allowed readers to be able to muse on the infusion of political ideas and feelings associated with political thought” (O’Gorman 234). This is exactly what romantic writers strived for, a way to be able to intrigue readers and allow them to create their own ideas and feelings towards certain situations. Romantic writers, such as Coleridge, wrote from their hearts completely and whatever they viewed to be true. In Frost at Midnight, Coleridge presents his childhood to the readers and how he perceives his child’s childhood versus his own. Whenever Coleridge was growing up he had a very unique experience of feeling trapped in the school he was in. He compares his school to prison, saying he was put inside bars. As he grew up he was constantly being surrounded by buildings because he lived within the city. He believes that the closer you are to nature, the closer you are to God. He strongly believes that his child will grow up being closer to God and have a better outcome in life because he is growing up in the country. He will never move out of the country because he wants the absolute best future for his child. A scene in the poem describes him rocking his baby and looking down at his baby wanting only the best. He has hopes that the baby can achieve whatever is thrown its way because it is surrounded by God’s beautiful nature constantly. Coleridge exemplifies the qualities of a Romantic writer throughout expressing his own personal situations throughout his writings, rather than writing from a very generic worldwide point of view.

The two authors, Alexander Pope and Samuel Coleridge, wrote from two very different writing periods, but there is a variety of writing similarities between the two. Whenever focusing on two of the poets most famous writings, Frost at Midnight by Coleridge and An Essay on Man by Pope, you can see that both hold extremely high values towards nature. Coleridge perceives nature as holding high standards in where you stand with Christ. He firmly believes the closer you are to nature, the closer you are to Christ. Very similarly, Pope believes that if you are surrounded by nature rather than living in the city than you are closer to God. In an Essay on Man, Pope believes that we should not go against God’s creation. In the same way, in Frost at Midnight, Coleridge believes you should allow nature to do what nature is supposed to do and let it affect the person in whatever way it is striving to. Both Coleridge and Pope wrote each of their poems with the main focus on God and how he plays a role within everyone’s life. God is at the center of each of their poems. Although both poets come from two different writing eras, both hold the same views on religion and how nature is seen as very important with your relationship with Christ. Pope’s writing from the Enlightenment era reflects the same beliefs of Coleridge’s in the Romantic era.

Although An Essay On Man and Frost at Midnight come from two different authors and time periods, they both share many of the same characteristics and beliefs. Pope and Coleridge both obtain completely different writing styles, but one can look into it and find many similarities. During both the Enlightenment and Romantic periods, poetry was growing. Both of the time periods hold important characteristics and beliefs that have shaped the world and literature into what it is today. It is extremely important to find the values within each writing period and take serious time to analyze and see how the world is perceived from all around. Pope and Coleridge were just two of many that came from different periods and shared a multitude of the same values.

Works Cited

• Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Views Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Chelsea House Publishers, 1986, pp. 1-2.
• Mack, Maynard. Alexander Pope A Life. Yale University Press, 1985, pp. 28-29.
• Mosley, George. Alexander Pope's Essay on Man and Tribulanization. Georgia Philosophical Association, pp. 176-79.
• Milam, Jennifer, and Nicola Parsons. Ideas and Enlightenment. Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 3-4.
• Fraistat, Neil. The Poem and the Book: Interpreting Collections of Romantic Poetry. Penguin Books, 2005, p. 2.
• O'Gorman, Francis. Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight', and Anticipating the Future. Edinburgh University Press, p. 234.