The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope: Lives, Example and the Poetic Response

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.

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CHILDHOOD ASTHMA AND THE SOCIAL MILIEU

Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry ◽

10.1016/s0002-7138(09)61912-9 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 353-366 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jules M Kluger

Keyword(s):

Childhood Asthma ◽

Social Milieu ◽

The Social

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The Social Milieu of 4QJera (4Q70) in a Second Temple Jewish Manuscript Culture: Fragments, Manuscripts, Variance, and Meaning

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Study of the Humanities ◽

10.1163/9789004376397_004 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 53-76

Keyword(s):

Second Temple ◽

Manuscript Culture ◽

Social Milieu ◽

The Social

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Conductus as Analgesic

Canadian University Music Review ◽

10.7202/1014310ar ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 49-59 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bryan Gillingham

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Thirteenth Century ◽

Detailed Account ◽

Social Milieu ◽

Specific Instance ◽

The Social ◽

The Middle Ages

One of the difficulties in creating an adequate picture of the contextual situation for music, other than that clearly associated with the liturgy, in the Middle Ages, is the paucity of accounts describing performance circumstances. We know little about the social milieu and purposes attending genres marginal to the liturgy such as the conductus and thirteenth-century motet. A manuscript which seems to redress this problem, albeit for one very specific instance, is Vat. lat. 2854 in the Vatican library in Rome. This manuscript is unusual in that it contains not only music but a detailed account of why the music was written. The author, Bonaiutus de Casentino, active in the circle of Pope Boniface VIII, prepared the manuscript in the last decade of the thirteenth century at Rome. The document includes various poems, sacred and secular, as well as two Latin songs written in late Franconian notation. One of the pieces is a two-voice conductus (Hec medela corporalis) which was written, according to the account of Bonaiutus himself, in order to cure the maladies of an ailing pontif. The pontifical complaints seemed to be both psychological and intestinal in nature. It was the hope of Bonaiutus not only to provoke laughter (always a curative), but also to cleanse the papal bowels through his composition. Although one cannot generalize on the basis of this single incident, it does yield a fascinating glimpse into a possible venue for the conductus.

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Community Networks

Handbook of Research on ICTs for Human-Centered Healthcare and Social Care Services ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-3986-7.ch010 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 187-207

Author(s):

John M. Carroll ◽

Mary Beth Rosson

Keyword(s):

Social Engagement ◽

Well Being ◽

Social Boundaries ◽

Social Milieu ◽

The Social ◽

Helping Others ◽

Design Idea ◽

Virtuous Cycle ◽

University Undergraduates ◽

Health And Well Being

The authors present a socio-technical design that illustrates how a community network health intervention can mobilize human resources across social boundaries and enhance health and well-being for people on both sides of the boundary. They specifically address how to reduce the barriers to social engagement experienced by autistic individuals who want more supportive life opportunities. The authors focus on the social milieu of an American college town, on traditional town-gown boundaries, and on possibilities for integrating social resources within this context. Their design adopts community networking to not only connect autistic persons living within an existing social milieu (university undergraduates; local autistic children and their families), but also to integrate individuals across milieus. The key design idea is that facilitating cross-milieu interactions can initiate and sustain a virtuous cycle of being helped by helping others.

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Alexander Pope and The Rape of the Lock – Conciliation or Judgment?

Law Culture and the Humanities ◽

10.1177/1743872111400803 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 244-265

Author(s):

Dawn Watkins

Keyword(s):

Roman Catholic ◽

Alexander Pope ◽

Political Issues ◽

The Social ◽

Definition Of ◽

Positivist Approach

The focus of this article is The Rape of the Lock, written by Alexander Pope (1688–1744). The poem was first published in 1712 but was further revised and expanded by Pope, prior to its publication in the first edition of Pope’s collected works in 1717. The opening lines of the poem What dire offence from am’rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things (Canto I.1–2) point to its ostensible purpose as an instrument of reconciliation; its epic treatment of a matter so trivial as the stealing of a lock of hair being designed to “laugh together” the once friendly but now hostile families of the offender and the offended. Although the conciliatory intent of the poem remains a popular assumption, scholars have strongly disputed this view, arguing instead that the anecdotal reporting of a family feud provided Pope with a most welcome and timely poetic opportunity. Pope was a Roman Catholic and because of the recusancy laws that existed throughout his lifetime all the conventional means by which he could hope to influence society were closed to him. However, this article argues that it was through the establishment of his reputation as a poet that Pope was able to gain authority and respect far beyond the confines of the Catholic community. Further, and via an alignment with views that dispute the traditional, positivist approach to the definition of legal judgment, the article suggests a reading of The Rape of the Lock as an instrument of judgment. The epic treatment of an insignificant dispute both operates to ridicule the trivial concerns of Pope’s immediate society, and allows for a wider questioning of the social and political issues of the period.

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