In Imitation of E. of Dorset: Artemisia

In Imitation of E. of Dorset: Artemisia is Alexander Pope at his most wickedly precise. This satirical epitaph targets a woman who commissioned an extravagant monument to herself in the church at Humbleby, and Pope dissects her vanity with the surgical accuracy that made him the era's undisputed master of the heroic couplet. The poem pretends to mourn Artemisia but spends its lines cataloguing her absurdities: her presumption, herarrogancethe very act of believing her own death worthy of such theatrical commemoration. Pope's genius lies in the gap between the poem's mournful form and its savagely comic content. It is a portrait painted with a blade. For readers who believe satire has lost its edge, this poem offers a masterclass in what wit weaponized can accomplish.