The Matter of Language; or, What Does "the Sound Must Seem an Eccho to the Sense" Mean?

Alexander Pope's famous dictum that "The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense" usually is taken to advocate straightforwardly that poetic sound can and should imitate meaning, in a kind of onomatopoeia writ large. This essay contends, however, that the real complexity of the line has not been recognized. Pope conjures a "seem"-ingly stable relation between "Sound" and "Sense" only to destabilize both terms and to raise fundamental questions about the material stuff of language. Indeed, reading Pope's "Eccho" alongside Enlightenment philosophy of language, this essay explores some sophisticated ways that poetry can participate in philosophy.