Pope's Ethical Thinking by The British Academy published on 2016-04-05T14:16:12Z Dr Christopher Tilmouth, University of Cambridge Tuesday 10 May 2011, 7.15 pm The British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH Alexander Pope discerned in his verse satires 'more of morality than wit', yet his work has been thought antipathetic to some of 18th-century Britain's most enduring strains of ethical reflection. Reappraising Pope's often noted complicity with those whom he otherwise attacked, this lecture asks what part Shaftesbury's polite wit, Mandeville's cynicism, and Augustan sentimentalism played in the poetry of England's greatest satirist. What, too, can Pope teach us about the relationship between literature and ethics? About the speaker Christopher Tilmouth is a University Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of English, Cambridge. His research focuses on conections between literature and philosophy both now and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His recent and forthcoming publications include articles on Shakespeare's idea of conscience, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, John Milton's poetry and prose, and the English reception of Descartes' philosophy, and he is also the author of Passion's Triumph over Reason: A History of the Moral Imagination from Spenser to Rochester. He is currently working on a book on Enlightenment literature and ethics. Genre Learning