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The poetry of Pope, for B.A. 2nd Semester

Topic- The poetry of Pope, supported by Podmeswar

*Discuss critically on Pope’s poetry.

Ans:-
In the 18th century, there was the completion of the reaction against Elizabethan Romanticism that had started in the 17th century with Denham, Walter and Dryden. Pope and his contemporaries stood on the other extreme to Elizabethan Romantists and ushered in the age of prose and region, as Mathew Arnold characterizes in the 18th century, Dryden and Pope were the greatest poets of the Augustan age who conscientiously looked to the writers of Greek and Roman antiquity for guidance and inspiration.
Pope was so strong as a poet that the 18th century is also known as the ‘Age of Pope’. One of the earliest works of Pope was ‘Pastorals’. These poems were published in 1709. The characters and scenery, based as they are on classical models, lack vigour and reality. Pope has already chosen his medium, the heroic couplet which is handled with great metrical skill, variation of special and tone, and delicacy of touch. In 1711 appeared ‘An Essay on Criticism’ which also written in heroic couplet. The poem professes to set forth the gospel of ‘wit’ and ‘nature’ and it applies to the literature of the age.
            In 1712 was published the first version of ‘The Rape of the Lock’, one of the most brilliant poems in the language. In it, Pope tried to laugh back into good humour two families who had been estranged when Lord Petrine off a lock of hair from the head of Miss Arabella Fermor. It is in the mock-heroic strain and its effective was greatly increased when in 1714, added the machinery of the sylph to the original version of the poem with his humourous epic-treatments of the trivial theme. A delicate fancy and a good deal at satire on the weakness of the fair sex and on society manners. For the most part of this satire is gentle and good humour, though occasionally the last half line of a couplet gives us a foretaste at the more incisive tones of the later poems of Pope.
            Pope translated the ‘Iliad’ which was completed by 1720. The Iliad is followed in 1725-26 by the ‘Odyssey’ which translated with the aid of two classical scholars, Fenton and Broome. Both works were successful as to make Pope a wealthy man, but brought upon him jealously and criticism.
            Pope’s many mistakes and cavalier treatment of the text were quickly saiged upon by his critics by particularly Theobol. Theobol’s criticism gained him the trone dullness in the ‘Dunciat’. In this poem modeled of Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe.  Pope turns to rent the host of minor writer whose attacks had been making his life a misery. But the poem is not merely a settlement of old scores, but if shows his satirical powers at their best and worst. It is changed with a stinging wit and has great vigour and varity of paste, but it spiteful. Very often, Pope condemned the good with the bad.
            The year 1733-1737 marked Pope’s last important time of production. In them appeared his ‘Imitation of Horace’ in which using the Latin sating as his model, Pope launched his at last in a series of poetical epistles on the great and corruption of his day. His famous poem Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’ is a brilliant work that contains the famous portrays of Lord Hervey and Addison.  They are masterpieces of satirical portraiture. ­­­

             
Note:- You should know some poetry names besides this.