In the Name of the Ancients: The Cross-Cultural Iconoclasm of Pope's Gardening Aesthetics

Abstract

T nHE contribution of Alexander Pope to the sudden and drastic transformation of the English pleasure ground in the early eigh teenth century has long been noted but not so far adequately ap preciated.' To very large extent, this is because of Pope's own tendency to promote the new irregular or naturalistic landscaping style in the name of those classical writers who were linked in one way or another with the old regular or geometrically organized formal garden that he not only wanted but also helped to destroy. In view of the distinct con trast in garden design between the freedom he advocated and the disci pline those ancient writers started, it is obviously ironic and misleading to attribute his horticultural achievement to a disposition to be more rather than ... less classical2 or to characterize it as [an] adaptation of classical idea by modern sensibility for the picturesque.3 His ever ready identification with his favorite classical writers is important and deserves serious attention; however, it should not be taken as literally as it has been. In particular, in the larger cross-cultural context of what