Alexander Pope

1688-1744
neoclassical aesthetic --- presiding artistic genius of the "Augustan Age"
or the "Neoclassical Period" ---probably the greatest "wit" of his time
congenitally frail constitution (humpbacked and deformed) ++++
struggled against various establishments--religious, political, and critical
arbiter morum + arbiter elegantiarum to his own age
mastered both the heroic couplet and the art of satire in his poetry
epigrammatic verse, notably The Rape of the Lock (1712; enlarged 1714)
and The Dunciad (1728; enlarged and revised 1742).
practiced diverse poetic styles, imitating classical modes ranging from
pastoral through satire to epic - classical ideals - order, beauty, wit, and
ethics
translated highly respected editions of Homer's lliad (1715-20) and
Odyssey (1725-26) into the contemporary idiom
professional authorship

child of a moderately wealthy Roman Catholic merchant

--- born in London in 1688, the year of the "Glorious
Revolution" (William of Orange enacted repressive
measures against all English Catholics)
restrictive religious segregation
civil disfranchisement
Pope 's resentment - surfaces in The Second Epistle Of
The Second Book of Horace, Imitated (1737)
sporadic primary education from private tutors and
priests --- mainly self-taught --- well read in classical and
English literature

Essay On Criticism (1711) - excellent command of the heroic couplet form

informal discussion of the literary acumen and practice of critical thinkers
both a treatise on the rules of composition and poet's manual for writing
poetry, with an appendix on the history of literary criticism and famous
critics
designed in 3 parts
PART ONE - vision of a golden era in art and criticism - the ancients could better
follow "Nature" as a correlative entity to that Divine Being which represents the
source of order within the creation, mysterious yet apprehensible
PART TWO - vision of the decay and disorder into which literary criticism has
fallen, specifically because of pride and the divisions, failings, and egoisms that
pervaded the critical establishment
PART THREE - the means of reformation, reconciliation, and restoration - what is
needed - personal virtue: an ethical dimension present throughout the poem
"Learn then what MORALS Criticks ought to show, / For 'tis but half a Judge's Task, to
Know. / 'Tis not enough, Taste, Judgment, Learning, join; / In all you speak, let Truth and
Candor shine"
"So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit
"A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing
"In ev'ry Work regard the Writer's End
"To Err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine
"Let such teach others who themselves excell
"Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread"

1712 The Rape of the Lock

"the most airy, the most ingenious, and the most delightful of all his compositions" (Johnson, Life
of Pope)
TITLE --- harsh, sexually violent connotations of the word rape + delicate use of lock
a mock-epic poem ----Popes first heroi-comical poem
based on a real-life incident - irreverent portrait of high society, suffused with literary allusions
and ironic observations on current events
recounts in high epic style the theft of a lock of a young woman's hair by a passionate young man
events ridiculous in their triviality and their temporality, yet brilliantly conceived "machinery"
"supernatural" personages: sylphs and gnomes, nymphs and salamanders
heroine's ominous prophetic dream
the card game of Ombre (literally, "man" )
the Cave of Spleen episode)
mythological beings to act in parody of the epic machinery of divine action
transfigures the incident of the stolen lock
consoles Belinda with the relative permanence of art: through this poem, the lost lock has in the
best Ovidian fashion been stellified, has become a shooting star which will outlast even the life of
Belinda

main structural design - sequences of allusions and parallels to Milton's

Paradise Lost:
"Morning-Dream" summoned to the sleeping Belinda by Ariel, her
"Guardian Sylph" - recalls the dream insinuated into Eve's mind by
Milton's Satan
scene at Belinda's dressing table - reminiscent of the newly created
Eve's narcissistic admiration of her self as reflected in the Edenic pool
Belinda's fall - normal human process of "falling" in love
moral disarray in a society's values and priorities (a disarray succinctly
established by the articles on Belinda's dressing table: "Puffs, Powders,
Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux")
though the lock is actually lost for good - in the last canto, Pope assures the
reader that it has been "translated" (in the theological sense) to the heavens
and metamorphosed into a star, "consecrate to Fame"
pattern of the poem resembles the tripartite pattern in An Essay On
Criticism: a state of "innocence," its loss, and a kind of "restoration"

devices peculiarly suited to convey this theme - upper-class Augustan

society, unlike
classical or Miltonic heroic society, has no clear sense of values
mock-epic - satirizing a loss of sense of values mock epic form adapts many of the
standard characters and situations of these traditional narratives and presents them in a
tone and style that are seemingly inappropriate for such trivial matters

epic battles - card games and snuff-throwing

descent into Hades - into a cave of female hysteria
benevolent Greek deities - sylphs and malicious ones gnomes
Achilles's seven-fold shield - layered petticoat
genealogy of weapons - history of Belinda's ornamental hairpin
at the Baron's sacrificial altar he burns 12 gilt French romances, three garters, a glove, and
billets-doux and lights the fire with three amorous

rhetorical device of zeugma - a word is placed in the same grammatical relationship to

two other words of very different absolute value

Belinda may ``stain her Honour, or her new Brocade ...''

Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball''
When Husbands or when Lap-dogs breathe their last....''
Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux''
Hampton Court Palace - where Queen Anne ``Dost sometimes Counsel take--and sometimes
Tea''

the trivial along with the serious

epic machinery is deflated from its original stature in a heroic-comical style