The Primacy of Poetry: On Tita Chico’s The Arts of Beauty: Women’s Cos

On Tita Chico’s The Arts of Beauty: Women’s Cosmetics and Pope’s Ekphrasis In â€Å"The Arts of Beauty: Women’s Cosmetics and Pope’s Ekphrasis,† Tita Chico contends that ekphrastic representations of women in The Rape of the Lock and Epistle to a Lady indicate Pope’s privileging poetic artistry over the art of cosmetics. In both poems, Pope exploits the humiliation of a â€Å"cosmetically constructed woman† in an effort to assert the supremacy of his own artistic authority (Chico 4). Chico uses other scholars―Laura Brown, Christa Knellwolf, and Felicity Naussbaum chief among them―to anchor the origins of her argument, but she immediately addresses their respective limitations. She gently criticizes other scholars for privileging the purely social aspects of Rape, thereby neglecting the implications of Pope’s aesthetic form. Exploring poetic form with particular attention to ekphrastic representation and the mock-epic genre enables Chico to extrapolate social significance and assert that aesthetic c hoice signifies Pope’s concern regarding the inherent value of different arts. That is, Pope’s heavily ekphrastic method of female representation effectively demeans cosmetic artistry, while lionizing his art of the masterfully crafted poem. Pope sought to keep the art of beauty in check—alleges Chico—as the power of cosmetic beauty â€Å"[threatened] to emasculate the viewer† (11). Chico offers a compelling evaluation of the relationship between Pope and his subject, particularly in her discussion of To a Lady, where the primacy of poetry over physical beauty is most evident. Rather than looking at female portraits, reading Pope’s poetry is the best way to seek â€Å"truth† about women (18). Chico shrewdly asserts t... ...Chico reiterates in her conclusion that Pope scorned cosmetics on account of their capacity to grant women artistic agency and render them evermore beautiful. And, as Chico most successfully maintains, Pope repeatedly conveyed the limitations of physical splendor—artificial pretense and transience chief among them—while privileging the power of his own poetic capabilities. [1] Chico discusses the following works: John Gauden, seventeenth century author of A Discourse of Artificial Beauty and In Point of Conscience between Two Ladies, argued that cosmetics enabled women to display their piety and goodness; The Art of Beauty, a 1719 poem by J.B., borrows Belinda as a character and satirizes the utter fatuity of the cosmetic realm; Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s 1711 Spectator 11 chastises cosmetics and derisively labels these artificial women â€Å"Picts† (5).