IDOL Institute of Distance and Online Learning
ENHANCE YOUR QUALIFICATION, ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. 2 M.A English
Course Code: MAE 602
Semester: First
E-Lesson: 7
SLM Unit: 8,9,10
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL British Poetry Till 17th
Century 3
OBJECTIVES INTRODUCTION Student will be introduced to the Alexander Pope and his age. In this unit we are going to learn about the comprehensive overview of Alexander Pope’s life. The students will be introduces to the major works of Alexander Pope. Significance of Alexander Pope’s work will be discussed. Student will be able to understand the contribution of Alexander Pope in the literature of Classical age.
The Student will be able to have an understanding about the major authors of Neo- classical age. Major writers and the characteristics of neo classical age will be discussed. www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE0 -MAE 602) 602 INSTITUTE OF DISTANCEAll right AND are reservedONLINE LEARNING with CU-IDOL TOPICS TO BE COVERED
4
> Chief characteristics of neo classical age
> Major writers of Neo classical age
> Alexander Pope and his works
> An introduction to the Rape of the Lock
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Neo Classical Age 5
•Neoclassical literature was written between 1660 and 1798. •This time period is broken down into three parts: the Restoration period, the Augustan period, and the Age of Johnson. •Writers of the Neoclassical period tried to imitate the style of the Romans and Greeks. •The term 'the Augustan Age' comes from the self-conscious imitation of the original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers of the period. •Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Chief Characteristics of Neo 6
•Order Classical age •Accuracy •Structure •Direct opposition to Renaissance attitude •Emphasis on restraint, self control and common sense •Imitation of the writing Style of Greek and Romans •The Era of Enlightenment •Emphasis on Logic and Reason
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Chief Characteristics of Neo Classical age 7 •The starting point of middle class •Literacy spread •The era of fashion •The Era of Conservatism • In Literature it was the age of : •Parody •Essays •Satire •Letters •Fables •Melodrama •Couplets www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Major Writers of Neo Classical Age 8 1. John Dryden: He is the greatest and most representative poet of his age. His poetry has all the characteristic features of Pseudo classicism. 2. John Milton: He was an English poet and intellectual, who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. 3. Oliver Goldsmith: He was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, his pastoral poem The Deserted Village. 4. Alexander Pope: He is regarded as one of the greatest English poets, and the foremost poet of the early eighteenth century. He is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock. www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL An Introduction to Alexander Pope 9
•The acknowledged master of the heroic couplet . •The primary tastemakers of the Augustan age. •A central figure in the Neoclassical movement of the early 18th century. •Pope was noted for his involvement in public feuds with the writers and publishers of low- end Grub Street. •Remembered as the first full-time professional English writer. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alexander-pope
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Biographical Details of Alexander Pope 10 •Pope was born on May 21, 1688 to a wealthy Catholic linen merchant. • 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 12, 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 •His exclusion from formal education.
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Biographical Details of Alexander Pope 11
•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. • After these successes, Pope could afford a lavish lifestyle and moved to a grand villa at Twickenham. • Modern scholars have evaluated Pope as a major literary voice engaged with both high and low cultural scenes.
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Major works by Alexander Pope 12
•The Rape of the Lock (1714) derides elite society.
• An Essay on Criticism (1711).
• An Essay on Man (1733–34).
• The Dunciad (1728).
• Poetical Miscellanies (1709).
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL An Essay on Criticism 13
• Pope’s first mature work. • A virtuosic exposition of literary theory, poetic practice, and moral philosophy. • Bringing together themes and ideas from the history of philosophy, the three parts of the poem illustrate a golden age of culture. • It describes the fall of that age. • It proposes a platform to restore it through literary ethics and personal virtues. •The work showcases Pope’s mastery of the heroic couplet in which he was capable of making longer arguments in verse as well as of producing such memorable phrases as “The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense” and “To Err is humane; to Forgive, Divine.”
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Rape of the Lock 14
• The mock epic. • It made Pope known to a general audience. • It is based on an actual incident in 1711. • Robert Lord Petre (“The Baron”) publicly cuts a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor (“Belinda”). • She is said to have been written at the request of a friend to encourage a rapprochement between the families, the poem nimbly depicts the foibles of high society. At once light-hearted and serious, addressing both the flimsiness of social status and the repercussions of public behavior, the poem is an in-depth study of contemporary social mores and the reasons for their existence. The Rape of the Lock was followed by “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717), which lyrically explored the 12th-century story of the passionate love of Heloïse d’Argenteuil and her teacher, the philosopher Peter Abelard.
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It is a long poem narrating the incidents that occur in the
life of a fashionable woman Belinda.
It is a mock epic.
Starts with an introduction of the theme.
Goddess of Music is invoked.
Journeys are described.
Contains long speeches.
Supernatural machinery is used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Lock
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL An Essay on Man 16
Essay on Man and Moral Epistles were designed to be the parts of a system of ethics which he wanted to express in poetry. Moral Epistles has been known under various other names including Ethic Epistles and Moral Essays. On its publication, An Essay on Man received great admiration throughout Europe. Voltaire called it “the most beautiful, the most useful, the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language”. The essay, written in heroic couplets, comprises four epistles. Pope began work on it in 1729, and had finished the first three by 1731. The poem was originally published anonymously.
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL An Essay on Man 17 Pope reveals in his introductory statement, "The Design", that An Essay on Man was originally conceived as part of a longer philosophical poem which would have been expanded on through four separate books. According to his friend and editor, William Warburton, Pope intended to structure the work as follows: The four epistles which had already been published would have comprised the first book. The second book was to contain another set of epistles, which in contrast to the first book would focus on subjects such as human reason, the practical and impractical aspects of varied arts and sciences, human talent, the use of learning, the science of the world, and wit, together with "a satire against the misapplication" of those same disciplines. The third book would discuss politics and religion, while the fourth book was concerned with "private ethics" or "practical morality."
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL The Dunciad 18
The Dunciad is a landmark mock-heroic narrative poem by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times from 1728 to 1743.
The poem celebrates a goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Pope told Joseph Spence (in Spence's Anecdotes) that he had been working on a general satire of Dulness, with characters of contemporary Grub Street scribblers, for some time and that it was the publication of Shakespeare Restored by Lewis Theobald that spurred him to complete the poem and publish it.
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL The Dunciad 19 Part of Pope's bitter inspiration for the characters in the book come from his soured relationship with the royal court. The Princess of Wales Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II, had supported Pope in her patronage of the arts. When she and her husband came to the throne in 1727 she had a much busier schedule and thus had less time for Pope who saw this oversight as a personal slight against him. When planning the Dunciad he based the character Dulness on Queen Caroline, as the fat, lazy and dull wife. Pope's bitterness against Caroline was a typical trait of his brilliant but unstable character. The King of the Dunces as the wife of Dulness was based on George II. Pope makes his views on the first two Georgian kings very clear in the Dunciad when he writes 'Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first'.
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Multiple Choice Questions
20 1.What religion was Pope? a) Jewish b) Methodist c) Anglican d) Roman Catholic 2. This satirical poem was inspired by an incident between Lord Petre and Miss Arabella Fermor. a) An Essay on Criticism b) The Dunciad c) Eloisa to Abelard d) The Rape of the Lock
Answers: 1. d) 2. d)
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Multiple Choice Questions
21 3.From which of the following did Pope not suffer? a) Spinal deformity b) Asthma c) Tuberculosis d) Prostate Cancer 4. In what profound undertaking did Pope attempt to "vindicate the ways of God to man"? a) Paradise Lost b) An Essay on Man c) An Essay on Criticism d) The Rape of the Lock
Answers: 3. c) 4. b) www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Summary 22 1. The summary includes certain characteristics of neo classical age as its:
Love for rules and regulations.
Logical Thinking
Sameness
Focus on form
And aristocracy
2. The famous writers of the era which includes John Dryden, Alexander Pope and John Milton.
3. Major works by Alexander Pope as his Rape of the Lock, a master piece of the age.
4. Characteristics of mock epic and how those characteristics can be seen in Rape of the Lock.
www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL Frequently Asked Questions
23 Q1.Why is the Age of Pope referred to as the Augustan Period? Ans—Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope Q2. What is the principle of decorum in neoclassical poetry? Ans—Writers of the Neoclassical period tried to imitate the style of the Romans and Greeks. Q3. What are the major neoclassicist themes in an Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope? Ans—A virtuosic exposition of literary theory, poetic practice, and moral philosophy. Q4.Write three features of the poem, The Rape of the Lock. Ans—The mock epic • It made Pope known to a general audience. • It is based on an actual incident in 1711. • Robert Lord Petre (“The Baron”) publicly cuts a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor (“Belinda”). www.cuidol.in Unit-8,9,10(MAE 602) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL References 24
1. Alexander Pope', Literature Online biography (Chadwyck-Healey: Cambridge, 2000). 2. "Martha Blount". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Retrieved 17 April 2009. 3. Baines, Paul. The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope. Routledge Publishing, 2001. 4. Cassirer, Ernst. An essay on man; an introduction to a philosophy of human culture. Yale University Press 1944. 5. Gordon, Ian. "An Epistle to a Lady (Moral Essay II)". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17 April 2009. 6. Erskine-Hill, Howard. 'Pope, Alexander, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, September 2004, online edn, January 2008). Accessed 18 April 2009. 7. Mack, Maynard. Alexander Pope: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press. (the definitive biography) 1985. 8. Nicholson, Colin. Writing and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1984. 9. Nuttal, Anthony. Pope's Essay on Man. Allen & Unwin. 1984. Rogers, Pat. The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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THANK YOU
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