18th Century: Alexander Pope

"Alexander Pope (May 22, 1688 – May 30, 1744) is considered one of the greatest English poets of the eighteenth century" (wikipedia). You should be familiar with “Rape of the Lock,” “An Essay on Criticism," “An Essay on Man” and The Dunciad. You should associate him with the form of heroic couplets, satire, and the Horatian mode . You should recognize him as the epitome of neoclassicism.

• Biography
• Overview of 18th-Century Poetry
• Works (etexts)
  • "Rape of the Lock”
    • Summary
    • etext
  • “An Essay on Criticism”
    • Summary
    • etext
  • “An Essay on Man” (selections in Norton)
    • Summary
    • etext
  • The Dunciad
    • Summary
    • etext

• " And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
  While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
  With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
  Wher'er you find "the cooling western breeze",
  In the next line, it "whispers through the trees";
  If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep",
  The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep" . . . (Essay of Criticism ll. 347-353)
• "The Peer now spreads the glittering Forfex wide,
  T' inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.
  Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd,
  A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;
  Fate urged the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,
  (But Airy Substance soon unites again)
  The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever
  From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!" (Canto III, "Rape of the Lock")