4.6: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Early Writing and Classical Influences

Pope started writing very early in his life. He self-studied classical, French, English, and Italian literature. Beginning with Pastorals (1709), Pope modeled his work on the classical writers of Rome, particularly Horace, Ovid, and Lucretius (99-55 BCE), and wrote in several classical genres, including satire, epic, and epistle.

Poetry and Literary Style

He expressed his views on literary decorum in his important An Essay on Criticism (1711). His other poems included the verse mock-epic The Rape of the Lock. His use of the mock-epic suggests that older genres, like the epic, were no longer appropriate to the kind of matter his society now had to deal with. It didn’t have epic matters, like the founding of states; it didn’t have epic heroes. So, the more appropriate form to use was the mock-epic, with an anti-hero. Pope’s mock-epic was inspired by an actual conflict between two families and took issue with the trivial and overly materialistic concerns of upper-class society with its lack of true moral judgment or self-perspective. Its concerns focus more on form and expression than on gender issues, despite the “violation” of its female protagonist’s lock of hair (Swift). Swift wrote from the female point-of-view in Eloisa to Abelard (1717), a poem considering human agency and spiritual integrity. His poems, including the more personal Windsor Forest—a locale where he grew up— all are marked by wit; extraordinary artfulness; deft and agile use of the heroic couplet form; seamless union of sound and sense; adroit and apt imagery; and refined, polished, even perfect, expression. As he convincingly notes in An Essay on Criticism: “True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,/ As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance” (lines 362-63).

Later Career and Legacy

In 1719, he settled permanently at Twickenham, a small villa on the Thames. He also devoted his life to letters, producing important multi-volume translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—the sales of which made him financially secure; an edition of William Shakespeare for which he wrote critical introductions; and “An Essay on Man,” which asserts his views on man’s place in the world (and on the hierarchical Great Chain of Being), particularly in relation to God (Pope).

His rich and active friendships with writers were exemplified in his joining the Scriblerus Club. Other members of the club included Jonathan Swift and John Gay. Pope marked his literary territory and alliances through satirical attacks on writers such as Joseph Addison (1672-1719) in An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735) and Lewis Theobald (1688-1744) and Colley Cibber (1671-1757) in his two editions of The Dunciad (1728, 1743).

Although Romantic literature of the nineteenth century rebelled against the formal limitations and artificiality of neoclassical works, William Wordsworth admired Pope’s writing. Pope continues to stand as one of the greatest neoclassical writers of the eighteenth century.

Work Cited

Pope, Alexander. The Dunciad: An Heroic Poem in Three Books. 1728. University of Oxford, 1928. HathiTrust, (CRC Library). 

---. The Dunciad. In Four Books. 1743. The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, commentary by George Gilfillan, produced by Jonathan Ingram et al., e-book ed., vol. 2, Project Gutenberg, 2 Jan. 2021. Project Gutenberg. 

---. Eloisa to Abelard. A Poem by Mr. Pope. 1717. Letters of Abelard and Heloise, written by Pierre Bayle, translated by John Hughes, produced by Jim Adcock, e-book ed., Project Gutenberg, 27 Apr. 2011. Project Gutenberg. 

---. An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. 1735. The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, edited by Thomas Marc Parrott, produced by Clytie Siddall et al., e-book ed., Project Gutenberg, 8 Dec. 2011. Project Gutenberg. 

---. An Essay on Criticism. 1709. Produced by Ted Garvin et al., e-book ed., Project Gutenberg, 7 Feb. 2015. Project Gutenberg.

---. An Essay on Man. An Essay on Man: Moral Essays and Satires, Cassell & Company, 1891. Project Gutenberg. 

---. The Rape of The Lock. The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, edited by Thomas Marc Parrott, produced by Clytie Siddall et al., e-book ed., Project Gutenberg, 8 Dec. 2011. Project Gutenberg.