Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21nd, 1688, and died in Twickenham on May 30th, 1744. Some of his achievements were in the fields of translating ( e.g. Iliad ) and editing ( e.g. Shakespeare ) of literary works. Besides, he was a writer of satires and epistles.

Pope did not attend university because he was a Catholic and that was why he was not allowed to receive education at a university; but he was nevertheless eager to read a lot and acquire education by teaching himself most of the time. From his early days, he composed poetry and it was only at the age of 17 that his Pastorals were published.

His first important success was his work An Essay on Criticism which was published in 1711. In 1713, he decided to translate the Iliad which caused people to wonder as to how a man without any academic education could manage to translate such a piece of work. Nevertheless, he started translating the Iliad and at the time he was working on the translation he was often attacked, above all because of his religion and the fact that people believed his knowledge of Greek was insufficient. Even though other people trying to translate the Iliad did not do any better, Pope was irritated nevertheless; the attacks towards his work finally made him become a satirist.

He was, above all, influenced by Horace and Boileau, but he was also affected by native English writers like Spenser, Milton and Dryden. Pope’s affection towards Horace’s writing style is reflected by him saying “that for the future he intended to write nothing but epistles in Horace’s manner.” ( Sherburne and Bond, 929 ) in 1729.

Some of his works:

An Essay on Criticism ( 1711 ) The Rape of the Lock ( 1712 – 1714 ) The Dunciad ( 1728 ) An Essay on Man ( 1733 – 1734 )

Sources

Sherburne, George, and Donald F. Bond. A Literary History of England, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century ( 1660 – 1789 ). London: Routledge, 1967.

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