Alexander Pope summary

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Alexander Pope, portrait by Thomas Hudson; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Alexander Pope, (born May 21, 1688, London, Eng.—died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London), English poet and satirist. A precocious boy precluded from formal education by his Roman Catholicism, Pope was mainly self-educated. A deformity of the spine and other health problems limited his growth and physical activities, leading him to devote himself to reading and writing. His first major work was An Essay on Criticism (1711), a poem on the art of writing that contains several brilliant epigrams (e.g., “To err is human, to forgive, divine”). His witty mock-epic The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) ridicules fashionable society. The great labour of his life was his verse translation of Homer’s Iliad (1720) and Odyssey (1726), whose success made him financially secure. He became involved in many literary battles, prompting him to write poems such as the scathing mock-epic The Dunciad (1728) and An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735). The philosophical An Essay on Man (1733–34) was intended as part of a larger work that he never completed.

satire Summary

Satire, artistic form, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, parody, caricature, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to inspire social reform. Satire is a

Homer Summary

Homer presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Although these two great epic poems of ancient Greece and Classical antiquity have always been attributed to the shadowy figure of Homer, little is known of him beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves

literary criticism Summary

Literary criticism, the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a term, to any argumentation about literature, whether or not specific works are analyzed. Plato’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in his Republic are thus often

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and