Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Alexander Pope - super important Restoration period figure, "The Rape of the Lock" very very important. Wrote almost exclusively in heroic couplets. 

"The Rape of the Lock"

• mock-heroic poem
• based on an incident involving Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre but refigures Arabella as Belinda and introduces "sylphs", or guardian spirits of virigins - a parodic version of the gods and goddesses of conventional epic
• Pope satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods, and is thus criticizing the overreaction of contemporary society to trivial things.

"What dire offence from amorous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things,

I sing; this verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:

This e'en Belinda may vouchsafe to view:

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,

If she inspire, and he approve my lays."

"The Peer now spreads the glittering Forfex wide,

T' inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd,
A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;
Fate urged the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,
(But Airy Substance soon unites again)
The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever
From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!"

Pope uses epic battle imagery to describe a small pair of ladies' scissors, hence satirizing the ridiculous nature of the whole situation. 

"Essay on Criticism"

• the poem is the nearest thing in 18th-century English writing to what might be called a neo-classical manfiesto
• it comes close to being a handbook or guide to the critic's and poet's art, much in the style of Horace's Ars Poetica
• articulated through an epigrammatic style
• built upon a series of maxims or pithy apothegms, such as "To Err is Humane; to forgive, Divine"; "For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."
• Pope's ability to sum up an idea tersely and memorably in a phrase, line or couplet of packed, imaginative clarity is a hallmark of An Essay on Criticism.

"Essay on Man"

• philosophical poem written in heroic couplets
• an attempt to justify the ways of God to man, and a warning that man himself is not, as in his pride he seems to believe, the center of all things.
• suggests that the universe appears imperfect to us only because our perceptions are limited by our feeble moral and intellectual capacity
• his conclusion is that we must learn to accept our position in the Great Chain of Being

"Say first, of God above, or man below,

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Of man, what see we but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,

'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

Observe how system into system runs,

What other planets circle other suns,

What varied being peoples every star,

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,

The strong connections, nice dependencies,

Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?

Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,

And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?"

The Dunciad

• expresses Pope's deep dismay concerning the feared loss of Britain's literary, cultural and ethical inheritance
• takes the idea of the personified goddess of Dulness being at war with reason and extends it to a full Aeneid parody
• his poem celebrates war rather than mere victory and he picks as his champion Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber (Theobald was his nemesis in editing Shakespeare and Cibber was Pope's poetic nemesis)
• poem losely modelled on Dryden's MacFlecknoe

"Eloisa to Abelard"

• Ovidian heroic epistle inspired by the 12th century story of Eloisa's illicit love and secret marriage to her teacher, Pierre Abelard, and the brutal vengeance her family exacts when they castrate him

"To a Lady"

• although the target of the satire appears at first to be aristocratic and wealthy women, the venom that Pope expends upon them clearly spreads to encompass women as a sex

"Nothing so true as what you once let fall,

Most Women have no Characters at all.

Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,

And best distinguish'd by black, brown or fair."