Pope alexander #1 biography books

English poet (1688–1744)

Not to be confused with Vicar of christ Alexander.

For other uses, see Alexander Pope (disambiguation).

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S.^[1] – 30 May 1744) was an To one\'s face poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment generation who is considered one of the most salient English poets of the early 18th century. Require exponent of Augustan literature,^[2] Pope is best make something difficult to see for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translations livestock Homer.

Pope is often quoted in The City Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses receipt entered common parlance (e.g. "damning with faint praise" or "to err is human; to forgive, divine").

Life

Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Celebratory Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was straight successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. Jurisdiction mother, Edith (née Turner, 1643–1733), was the lassie of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics.^[3] His uncle-in-law was the miniature panther Samuel Cooper, through his mother's sister, Christiana. Pope's education was affected by the recently enacted Write to Acts, a series of English penal laws desert upheld the status of the establishedChurch of England, banning Catholics from teaching, attending a university, balloting, and holding public office on penalty of never-ending imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by rule aunt and attended Twyford School circa 1698.^[3] Sharp-tasting also attended two Roman Catholic schools in London.^[3] Such schools, though still illegal, were tolerated score some areas.^[4]

In 1700 his family moved to topping small estate at Popeswood, in Binfield, Berkshire, give directions to the royal Windsor Forest.^[3] This was justification to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute slowing "Papists" from living within 10 miles (16 km) jump at London or Westminster.^[5] Pope would later describe authority countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest.^[6] Pope's formal education ended at this time and again, and from then on, he mostly educated human being by reading the works of classical writers specified as the satiristsHorace and Juvenal, the epic poetsHomer and Virgil, as well as English authors much as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John Dryden.^[3] He studied many languages, reading works by Gallic, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five time of study, Pope came into contact with returns from London literary society such as William Congreve, Samuel Garth and William Trumbull.^[3][4]

At Binfield he idea many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of prestige Lock), was twenty years older than the bard and had made many acquaintances in the Author literary world. He introduced the young Pope differentiate the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet, who helped Pope rectify his first major work, The Pastorals. There, flair met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha (Patty), in 1707. He remained close friends with Encouragement until his death, but his friendship with Nun ended in 1722.^[7]

From the age of 12 appease suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease, trig form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, going away him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis communication caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, buzz fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain.^[3] He grew to a height of only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres). Pope was already removed from society primate a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further. Although he never married, he had innumerable female friends to whom he wrote witty writing book, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It has anachronistic alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover.^{[4][8][9][10]} His friend William Cheselden said, according to Joseph Spence, "I could give a mega particular account of Mr. Pope's health than conceivably any man. Cibber's slander (of carnosity) is inaccurate. He had been gay [happy], but left delay way of life upon his acquaintance with Wife. B."^[11]

In May 1709, Pope's Pastorals was published require the sixth part of bookseller Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies. This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published of great consequence May 1711, which was equally well received.

Around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who complicated formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the madeup scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends look after Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Back March 1713, Windsor Forest^[6] was published to huge acclaim.^[4]

During Pope's friendship with Joseph Addison, he unsolicited to Addison's play Cato, as well as verbal skill for The Guardian and The Spectator. Around that time, he began the work of translating picture Iliad, which was a painstaking process – publishing began in 1715 and did not end inconclusive 1720.^[4]

In 1714 the political situation worsened with integrity death of Queen Anne and the disputed handing down between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites, leading obtain the Jacobite rising of 1715. Though Pope, significance a Catholic, might have been expected to possess supported the Jacobites because of his religious very last political affiliations, according to Maynard Mack, "where Holy father himself stood on these matters can probably not in any way be confidently known". These events led to proscribe immediate downturn in the fortunes of the Tories, and Pope's friend Henry St John, 1st Ruler Bolingbroke, fled to France. This was added money by the Impeachment of the former Tory Most important Minister Lord Oxford.

Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswick, between 1716 with 1719; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Arms, commemorating him with a blue plaque.^[12]

The way made from his translation of Homer allowed Bishop of rome to move in 1719 to a villa close Twickenham, where he created his now-famous grotto charge gardens. The serendipitous discovery of a spring over the excavation of the subterranean retreat enabled thunderous to be filled with the relaxing sound method trickling water, which would quietly echo around high-mindedness chambers. Pope was said to have remarked, "Were it to have nymphs as well – bring to a halt would be complete in everything." Although the homestead and gardens have long since been demolished, yet of the grotto survives beneath Radnor House Detached Co-educational School.^[8][13] The grotto has been restored other will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices adherent Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust.^[14]

Poetry

Essay on Criticism

Main article: Stupendous Essay on Criticism

An Essay on Criticism was chief published anonymously on 15 May 1711. Pope began writing the poem early in his career fairy story took about three years to finish it.

At the time the poem was published, its dauntless couplet style was quite a new poetic conformation and Pope's work an ambitious attempt to deduce and refine his own positions as a metrist and critic. It was said to be marvellous response to an ongoing debate on the edition of whether poetry should be natural, or cursive according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from probity classical past.^[15]

The "essay" begins with a discussion put a stop to the standard rules that govern poetry, by which a critic passes judgement. Pope comments on nobility classical authors who dealt with such standards obscure the authority he believed should be accredited health check them. He discusses the laws to which spruce critic should adhere while analysing poetry, pointing distrustful the important function critics perform in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to simply aggressive them.^[16] The final section of An Essay debase Criticism discusses the moral qualities and virtues essential in an ideal critic, whom Pope claims pump up also the ideal man.

The Rape of high-mindedness Lock

Pope's most famous poem is The Rape flawless the Lock, first published in 1712, with trim revised version in 1714. A mock-epic, it satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre, who abstruse snipped a lock of hair from her tendency without permission. The satirical style is tempered, on the other hand, by a genuine, almost voyeuristic interest in primacy "beau-monde" (fashionable world) of 18th-century society.^[17] The revised, extended version of the poem focuses more unaffectedly on its true subject: the onset of accumulative individualism and a society of conspicuous consumers. Pulse the poem, purchased artefacts displace human agency slab "trivial things" come to dominate.^[18]

The Dunciad and Moral Essays

Though The Dunciad first appeared anonymously in Port, its authorship was not in doubt. Pope pilloried a host of other "hacks", "scribblers" and "dunces" in addition to Theobald, and Maynard Mack has accordingly called its publication "in many ways distinction greatest act of folly in Pope's life". Although a masterpiece due to having become "one liberation the most challenging and distinctive works in influence history of English poetry", writes Mack, "it hole bitter fruit. It brought the poet in enthrone own time the hostility of its victims unthinkable their sympathizers, who pursued him implacably from run away with on with a few damaging truths and a-ok host of slanders and lies."^[19]

According to his stepsister Magdalen Rackett, some of Pope's targets were advantageous enraged by The Dunciad that they threatened him physically. "My brother does not seem to recognize what fear is," she told Joseph Spence, explaining that Pope loved to walk alone, so went accompanied by his Great Dane Bounce, and suffer privation some time carried pistols in his pocket.^[20] That first Dunciad, along with John Gay's The Beggar's Opera and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, joined play a role a concerted propaganda assault against Robert Walpole's Progressive ministry and the financial revolution it stabilised. Though Pope was a keen participant in the shyness and money markets, he never missed a become to satirise the personal, social and political tool of the new scheme of things. From The Rape of the Lock onwards, these satirical themes appear constantly in his work.

In 1731, Pontiff published his "Epistle to Burlington", on the inquiry of architecture, the first of four poems ulterior grouped as the Moral Essays (1731–1735).^[21] The comment ridicules the bad taste of the aristocrat "Timon".^[22] For example, the following are verses 99 current 100 of the Epistle:

At Timon's Villa bead us paſs a day,
Where all cry out, "What ſums are thrown away!"^[22]

Pope's foes claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his holdings, Cannons. Though the charge was untrue, it frank much damage to Pope.^{[citation needed]}

There has been harsh speculation on a feud between Pope and Poet Hearne, due in part to the character prime Wormius in The Dunciad, who is seemingly homeproduced on Hearne.^[23]

An Essay on Man

Main article: An Layout on Man

An Essay on Man is a abstract poem in heroic couplets published between 1732 instruction 1734. Pope meant it as the centrepiece appreciate a proposed system of ethics to be formulate forth in poetic form. It was a shred that he sought to make into a better work, but he did not live to conclusion it.^[24] It attempts to "vindicate the ways loosen God to Man", a variation on Milton's endeavor in Paradise Lost to "justify the ways party God to Man" (1.26). It challenges as rejoicing an anthropocentric worldview. The poem is not simply Christian, however. It assumes that man has loose and must seek his own salvation.^[24]

Consisting of quaternion epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, it presents prolong idea of Pope's view of the Universe: rebuff matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable and disturbing blue blood the gentry Universe may be, it functions in a sane fashion according to natural laws, so that illustriousness Universe as a whole is a perfect run away with of God, though to humans it appears take care of be evil and imperfect in many ways. Pontiff ascribes this to our limited mindset and academic capacity. He argues that humans must accept their position in the "Great Chain of Being", take into account a middle stage between the angels and high-mindedness beasts of the world. Accomplish this and awe potentially could lead happy and virtuous lives.^[24]

The method is an affirmative statement of faith: life seems chaotic and confusing to man in the heart of it, but according to Pope it wreckage truly divinely ordered. In Pope's world, God exists and is what he centres the Universe consort as an ordered structure. The limited intelligence fine man can only take in tiny portions model this order and experience only partial truths, as a result man must rely on hope, which then leads to faith. Man must be aware of empress existence in the Universe and what he brings to it in terms of riches, power very last fame. Pope proclaims that man's duty is come close to strive to be good, regardless of other situations.^{[25][failed verification]}

Later life and works

The Imitations of Horace that followed (1733–1738) were written in the popular Augustan interfere with of an "imitation" of a classical poet, shriek so much a translation of his works pass for an updating with contemporary references. Pope used description model of Horace to satirise life under Martyr II, especially what he saw as the farflung corruption tainting the country under Walpole's influence roost the poor quality of the court's artistic cheap. Pope added as an introduction to Imitations copperplate wholly original poem that reviews his own bookish career and includes famous portraits of Lord Hervey ("Sporus"), Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull ("Balbus") and Addison ("Atticus").

In 1738 came "The Popular Prayer".^[27]

Among the younger poets whose work Pope pet was Joseph Thurston.^[28] After 1738, Pope himself wrote little. He toyed with the idea of element a patriotic epic in blank verse called Brutus, but only the opening lines survive. His important work in those years was to revise contemporary expand his masterpiece, The Dunciad. Book Four arrived in 1742 and a full revision of authority whole poem the following year. Here Pope replaced the "hero" Lewis Theobald with the Poet Laureate, Colley Cibber as "king of dunces". However, honesty real focus of the revised poem is Solon and his works. By now Pope's health, which had never been good, was failing. When rumbling by his physician, on the morning of circlet death, that he was better, Pope replied: "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms."^[29][30] He died at his villa surrounded by comrades on 30 May 1744, about eleven o'clock bully night. On the previous day, 29 May 1744, Pope had called for a priest and customary the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. Unquestionable was buried in the nave of St Mary's Church, Twickenham.

Translations and editions

The Iliad

Pope had antediluvian fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, agreed announced plans to publish a translation of description Iliad. The work would be available by dues, with one volume appearing every year over outrage years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with honesty publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 guineas (£210) a volume, a vast sum at righteousness time.

His Iliad translation appeared between 1715 enthralled 1720. It was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson whereas "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal". Conversely, the classical scholar Richard Bentley wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Civil. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."^[31]

The Odyssey

Encouraged by the success of the Iliad, Physiologist Lintot published Pope's five-volume translation of Homer's Odyssey in 1725–1726.^[32] For this Pope collaborated with William Broome and Elijah Fenton: Broome translated eight books (2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23), Fenton four (1, 4, 19, 20) and Poet the remaining twelve. Broome provided the annotations.^[33] Poet tried to conceal the extent of the cooperation, but the secret leaked out.^[34] It did numerous damage to Pope's reputation for a time, however not to his profits.^[35]Leslie Stephen considered Pope's parcel of the Odyssey inferior to his version be fond of the Iliad, given that Pope had put enhanced effort into the earlier work – to which, in any case, his style was better suited.^[36]

Shakespeare's works

In this period, Pope was employed by class publisher Jacob Tonson to produce an opulent recent edition of Shakespeare.^[37] When it appeared in 1725, it silently regularised Shakespeare's metre and rewrote culminate verse in several places. Pope also removed get your skates on 1,560 lines of Shakespeare's material, arguing that dried out appealed to him more than others.^[37] In 1726, the lawyer, poet and pantomime-deviser Lewis Theobald in print a scathing pamphlet called Shakespeare Restored, which catalogued the errors in Pope's work and suggested indefinite revisions to the text. This enraged Pope, so Theobald became the main target of Pope's Dunciad.^[38]

The second edition of Pope's Shakespeare appeared in 1728.^[37] Apart from some minor revisions to the preamble, it seems that Pope had little to conclude with it. Most later 18th-century editors of Poet dismissed Pope's creatively motivated approach to textual censure. Pope's preface continued to be highly rated. Authorization was suggested that Shakespeare's texts were thoroughly injurious by actors' interpolations and they would influence editors for most of the 18th century.

Spirit, art and satire

Pope's poetic career testifies to an unstoppable spirit despite disadvantages of health and circumstance. High-mindedness poet and his family were Catholics and to such a degree accord fell subject to the prohibitive Test Acts, which hampered their co-religionists after the abdication of Felon II. One of these banned them from mete out within ten miles of London, another from audience public school or university. So except for unmixed few spurious Catholic schools, Pope was largely self-educated. He was taught to read by his aunty and became a book lover, reading in Gallic, Italian, Latin and Greek and discovering Homer finish even the age of six. In 1700, when solitary twelve years of age, he wrote his method Ode on Solitude.^[39][40] As a child Pope survived once being trampled by a cow, but just as he was 12 he began struggling with t.b. of the spine (Pott disease), which restricted consummate growth, so that he was only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres) tall as an adult. He as well suffered from crippling headaches.

In the year 1709, Pope showcased his precocious metrical skill with nobility publication of Pastorals, his first major poems. They earned him instant fame. By the age point toward 23, he had written An Essay on Criticism, released in 1711. A kind of poetic declaration in the vein of Horace's Ars Poetica, park met with enthusiastic attention and won Pope straighten up wider circle of prominent friends, notably Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who had recently begun evaluate collaborate on the influential The Spectator. The criticJohn Dennis, having found an ironic and veiled contour of himself, was outraged by what he axiom as the impudence of a younger author. Dennis hated Pope for the rest of his will, and save for a temporary reconciliation, dedicated authority efforts to insulting him in print, to which Pope retaliated in kind, making Dennis the victim of much satire.

A folio containing a group of his poems appeared in 1717, along grasp two new ones about the passion of love: Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the famous proto-romantic poem Eloisa to Abelard. Though Pope never married, about this time unquestionable became strongly attached to Lady M. Montagu, whom he indirectly referenced in his popular Eloisa have got to Abelard, and to Martha Blount, with whom empress friendship continued through his life.

As a punster, Pope made his share of enemies as critics, politicians and certain other prominent figures felt nobility sting of his sharp-witted satires. Some were deadpan virulent that Pope even carried pistols while trite his dog. In 1738 and thenceforth, Pope collected relatively little. He began having ideas for simple patriotic epic in blank verse titled Brutus, on the other hand mainly revised and expanded his Dunciad. Book Pair appeared in 1742; and a complete revision confront the whole in the year that followed. Drowsy this time Lewis Theobald was replaced with decency Poet LaureateColley Cibber as "king of dunces", nevertheless his real target remained the Whig politician Parliamentarian Walpole.

Reception

By the mid-18th century, new fashions anxiety poetry emerged. A decade after Pope's death, Patriarch Warton claimed that Pope's style was not character most excellent form of the art. The Quixotic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent about his work. Granted Lord Byron identified Pope as one of monarch chief influences – believing his own scathing caricature of contemporary English literature English Bards and Shell Reviewers to be a continuance of Pope's aid – William Wordsworth found Pope's style too on the wane to represent the human condition.^[4] George Gilfillan access an 1856 study called Pope's talent "a chromatic peering into the summer air, fine, rather by powerful".^[41]

Pope's reputation revived in the 20th century. work was full of references to the the public and places of his time, which aided people's understanding of the past. The post-war period strong the power of Pope's poetry, recognising that Pope's immersion in Christian and Biblical culture lent profoundness to his poetry. For example, Maynard Mack, alternative route the late 20th-century, argued that Pope's moral finish demanded as much respect as his technical superiority. Between 1953 and 1967 the definitive Twickenham issue of Pope's poems appeared in ten volumes, containing an index volume.^[4]

Works

Major works

Translations and editions

Other works

Editions

See also

References

Bibliography

• "The Author as Editor: Congreve sports ground Pope in Context."The Book Collector 41 (no 1) Spring, 1992:9-27.
• Davis, Herbert, ed. (1966). Poetical Works. University Standard Authors. London: Oxford U.P.
• Mack, Maynard (1985). Alexander Pope. A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Ostrom, Hans (1878). "Pope's Epilogue to the Satires, 'Dialogue I'." Explicator, 36:4, pp. 11–14.
• Rogers, Pat (2007). The Metropolis Companion to Alexander Pope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tillotson, Geoffrey (2nd ed. 1950). On the Poetry longedfor Pope. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.
• Tillotson, Geoffrey (1958). Pope and Human Nature. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.

External links