Question

5 couplers of Alexander pope with Explanation

Answer 1

The acknowledged master of the heroic couplet and one of the primary tastemakers of the Augustan age, Alexander Pope was a central figure in the Neoclassical movement of the early 18th century. He was known for having perfected the rhymed couplet form of his idol, John Dryden, and turned it to satiric and philosophical purposes. His mock epic The Rape of the Lock (1714) derides elite society, while An Essay on Criticism (1711) and An Essay on Man (1733-34) articulate many of the central tenets of 18th-century aesthetic and moral philosophy. Pope was noted for his involvement in public feuds with the writers and publishers of low-end Grub Street, which led him to write The Dunciad (1728), a scathing account of England’s cultural decline, and, at the end of his life, a series of related verse essays and Horatian satires that articulated and protested this decline. Pope is also remembered as the first full-time professional English writer, having supported himself largely on subscription fees for his popular translations of Homer and his edition of the works of William Shakespeare. Although a major cultural figure of the 18th century, Pope fell out of favor in the Romantic era as the Neoclassical appetite for form was replaced by a vogue for sincerity and authenticity. Interest in his poetry was revived in the early 20th century. He is recognized as a great formal master, an eloquent expositor of the spirit of his age, and a representative of the culture and politics of the Enlightenment.

Pope was born on May 21, 1688 to a wealthy Catholic linen merchant, Alexander Pope, and his second wife, Edith Turner. In the same year, the Protestant William of Orange took the English throne. Because Catholics were forbidden to hold office, practice their religion, attend public schools, or live within ten miles of London, Pope grew up in nearby Windsor Forest and was mostly self-taught, his education supplemented by study with private tutors or priests. At the age of twelve, he contracted spinal tuberculosis, which left him with permanent physical disabilities. He never grew taller than four and a half feet, was hunchbacked, and required daily care throughout adulthood. His irascible nature and unpopularity in the press are often attributed to three factors: his membership in a religious minority, his physical infirmity, and his exclusion from formal education. However, Pope was bright, precocious, and determined and, by his teens, was writing accomplished verse. His rise to fame was swift. Publisher Jacob Tonson included Pope’s Pastorals, a quartet of early poems in the Virgilian style, in his Poetical Miscellanies (1709), and Pope published his first major work, An Essay on Criticism, at the age of 23. He soon became friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, editors of the Spectator, who published his essays and poems, and the appearance of The Rape of the Lock made him famous in wider circles.

In the mid-1720s, Pope became associated with a group of Tory literati called the Scriblerus Club, which included John Gay, Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, and Thomas Parnell. The club encouraged Pope to release a new translation of Homer’s Iliad (circa 8th century BCE) via subscription, a publication method whereby members of the public gave money in advance of a text’s appearance with the agreement that they would receive handsome, inscribed editions of the completed volumes. The Iliad was a tremendously popular publishing venture, and it made Pope self-supporting. He followed with subscription editions of the Odyssey (circa 8th to 7th centuries BCE) and of Shakespeare’s works. After these successes, Pope could afford a lavish lifestyle and moved to a grand villa at Twickenham. The estate’s grounds included miniature sculptured gardens and a famous grotto, an underground passageway decorated with mirrors that connected the property to the London Road.