This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the greatest English poet of his age, whose acerbic insights into human nature have entered the language, and whose verse still astonishes with its energy and inventiveness centuries after his death. This new selection of Pope's work follows the path of his poetic genius over his lifetime. It contains early poems including the masterly mock-epic 'The Rape of the Lock', which satirizes a notorious society scandal through glorious heroic couplets, the brilliantly aphoristic 'An Essay on Criticism' and excerpts from his translation of the Iliad. Later poems represented include Pope's ironic adaptations of Horace's Epistles, Satires and Odes, and the remarkable 'Dunciad', a stinging attack on his literary rivals and the mediocrity of Grub Street hacks. Here too are selected prose works and letters from Pope to his contemporaries such as John Gay and Jonathan Swift.
Solomon (English, Auburn U.) deconstructs the two centuries of criticism of Pope's long philosophical poem, which was loved by his contemporaries, and has been denigrated and trivialized by recent critics. He concludes that literary critics should not try to interpret philosophy. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In addition to the acclaimed title poem, this collection includes "The Rape of the Lock," "Ode on Solitude," "The Dying Christian to His Soul," "An Essay on Criticism," "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" and many others.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the most important English poet of the 18th century, as well as an essayist, satirist, and critic. Many of his sayings are still quoted today. His Essay on Criticism shaped the aesthetic views of English Neoclassicism, while his Essay on Man reflected the moral views of the Enlightenment. He participated fully in the critical debates of his time and was one of the few poets who supported himself through his writing. This reference conveniently summarizes his life and works. Included are several-hundred alphabetically arranged entries on Pope's works, subjects that interested him, historical events that impacted Pope's life and work, cultural terms and categories, Pope's family members and acquaintances, major scholars and critics, and various other topics related to his writings. The entries reflect current scholarship and cite works for further reading. The encyclopedia also provides a chronology and concludes with a selected, general bibliography. Because of Pope's central importance to the Enlightenment, this book is also a useful companion to 18th-century literary and intellectual culture.
This title was first published in 2002: Making use of the growing body of research in recent years on the nature of creativity, Netta Goldsmith here presents a new view of the famous poet whose personality has long frustrated scholars as elusive. Goldsmith tells the story of Pope's life so as to show the factors-personal and public, psychological and social-which shaped his character and enabled him to secure widespread recognition as a major poet. Discussions of significant works are integrated into the narrative covering main events and key relationships, as well as illustrating points made throughout about Pope's approach to his art. Among other things this book shows how vulnerable Pope felt as a Papist in a time of endemic Jacobite activity, and how his fear of possible prosecution for sedition determined much of his conduct and the way he shaped his career. Alexander Pope: The evolution of a poet not only provides a fresh perspective on Pope, but also on the very nature of literary creativity.
So many questions surround the key figures in the English literary canon, but most books focus on one aspect of an author's life or work, or limit themselves to a single critical approach. Alexander Pope is a comprehensive, user-friendly guide which: * offers information on Pope's life, contexts and works * outline the major critical issues surrounding his works, from the time they were written to the present *explains the full range of different critical views and interpretations * offers guides to further reading in each area discussed.
This is the first collection of essays since George Sherburn’s landmark monograph The Early Career of Alexander Pope (1934) to reconsider how the most important and influential poet of eighteenth-century Britain fashioned his early career. The volume covers Pope’s writings from across the reign of Queen Anne and just beyond. It focuses, in particular, on his interaction with the courtly culture constellated round the Queen. It examines, for instance, his representations of Queen Anne herself, his portrayals of politics and patronage under her reign, his negotiations with current literary theory, with the classical tradition, with chronologically distant yet also contemporaneous English poets, with current thought on the passions, and with membership of a religious minority. In doing so, it comprehensively reconsiders anew the ways in which Pope, increasingly supportive of Anne’s rule and mindful of the Virgilian rota, sought at first to realise his authorial aspirations.
In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer’s book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.
