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POPE’S WORKS

Popes poetic career can be classified into three periods


· Period before 1715
· Period of Translation
· Satiric and Didactic period

1) Period before 1715


Many numbers of miscellaneous poems are written during this period. The most
important poems are
A) Four Pastorals
B) The Messiah
C) Windsor Forest
D) Essay on Criticism
E) The Rape of the Lock
A) Four Pastorals
Pope’s earliest important work is his Pastorals. These poems are almost, certainly
published in 1709.These are short poems on spring, summer, autumn and winter. It was
fashioned on Vergil and in the most artificial manner of their class.
B) The Messiah
It is the poetic rendering of the messianic passages in Isaiah. It is an imitation of
Vergil’s fourth eclogue. The original beauty is lost in the meretricious glitter of Pope’s
overwrought style.
C) Windsor forest
It is inspired by Denham’s Cooper’s Hill. The description of nature in this
poem differs from that of romantic poems. Pope does not paint the natural landscape but
presents the landscape of Greek and Latin poets.
D) Essay on Criticism
It is a remarkable work of his early age, it is not original in conception, for it
was inspired by Horace’s Ars Poetica and Boileau’s L’Art Poetique. Lady Mary Wortley
remarked that, it is ‘all stolen’. The poem is not at all an interesting poem because it is a
popular interpretation of the literary creed of the age.
E) THE RAPE OF THE LOCK
It has many dimensions. Pope defines the poem as a ‘heroic-comical’ and it is
his master piece. It was better called as mock epic. Lord Petre cuts a lock of hair from
young Arabella Fermor (Belinda in the poem).This leads a quarrel between two families
and that becomes the theme of the poem. On the contrary to Butler’s Hudibras, Pope has
handled the poem will all the dignity and seriousness which properly belong to the epic,
especially the employment of the “Supernatural machinery”. The scenes and phrases are
directly imitated and burlesqued from the great epic. The poem also reflects Pope’s
cynical attitude towards women. Yet, it is the most perfect of its kind in our literature.
2) Translations
Pope has translated Illiad and Odyssey. Illiad is translated single handedly and latter
with the aid of two classical scholars, Fenton and Broome. Both works are popularly
known as Homer. Pope caters to the needs of his contemporary audience. It is a very
striking and brilliant piece of eighteenth century work. As Gibbon points out that his
translation has every merit except loyalty to the original.
3) Satiric and Didactic poetry.
After the publication of Homer, Pope confined himself almost wholly to
satiric and didactic poetry. The main works of this period are:-
A) Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated
Pope wrote a prologue to this work which is called the Epistle to
Dr.Arbuthnot. It is a valuable personal writings of Pope. He satirizes Addison as Atticus
and Lord Halifax as Bufo. They are classics of satirical portraiture.
B) The Dunciad
It is a long and elaborate satire on the ‘dunces’-the bad poets, pedants and
pretentious critics of his period. The epic machinery is suggested and inspired by
Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe. Because of the obscurity of the satire, modern reader finds
difficult to understand the dunces attacked.
C) The Essay on Man
It is a poem in four epistles. Here, he undertakes a defence of the moral
government of the universe and explains the evil in it. Unfortunately, Pope is not a
philosopher. His little knowledge in the field of philosophy has made the poem in a
confused stage. Influenced by his friend Lord Bolingbroke, he has written on Deistic
principles. But it is famous for the quotations and also for rhetorical beauty and power.
Merit of Pope is that, after Shakespeare he is the most frequently quoted of
English poets.
“And fools rush in where angels fear to tread”
“To err is human, to forgive divine”
“The proper study of mankind is man”
are some of the familiar lines.

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