Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

because he was very short, deformed by tubercolosis of the bone. A cripple. But, he was extremely intelligent. His wit compensate his handicaps.

Because of his religion; he was a roman catholic, and this gave him a lot of disadvantages (he couldn't live in London, couldn't go to university, he had to pay a lot of taxes; this is why the Stuart pretenders were a real thread -come per noi oggi il terrorismo-).

Addison, a strong Whig, disliked Pope because he was a catholic Tory; conflict between them! When Pope translated the Iliad he used a common language and not an old fashion one, so classical scholars like Addison said it was not a good translation.

Pope suffered from his lack of university, so he used the satire as a weapon against people who used to criticize him.

Pope went to a process of SELF FASHIONING (si crea una nuova personalità). He creates himself an image of wealth (the Villa) and also plays the role of a RAKE (a libertine). He rationally created this image and he defended it through satire.

Pope with Swift and Gay (all Tories against the corrupted 1^st minister Walpole) formed a male club called "The Scribblers" and the criticize the politicians who were in favour of popular literature through the figure of Martin Scribbler. Pope and his club attacked female writers and the popular standard writer, that the new readership appreciated so much.

He was in the front line creating opinion. He was an OPINION-MAKER. He made people think through his wit. (He was probably a little too full of himself).

"the life of wit is a warfare on earth"; he describes with this words his struggle to make people understands what he thinks and say (it's no life of relax).

In his DUNCIAD he satirize Eliza Haywood as a kind of count.

Pope's language:

Heroic couplets.

Dryden had a great ability in renew language in order to make it communicate with people; Pope continues this process.
He wrote most of his works (mock epic) in heroic couplets but he managed to innovate it playing with stresses, and manipulated the couplets to make them more colloquially speaking.
Pope is a POET TRANSLATING ANOTHER POET; this is important because a lot of the things he translated come into him, into his personal baggage.

He reedited Shakespeare because

a)  to make money

b)  because ghosts were no more acceptable

This reediting of S. he made was for him another source of money and a new occasion for Addison to attack him (because he was not a scholar and so on).

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM, p. 1123

- How were authors and critics to behave in this new open forum?
Si permette di interrogarsi sul ruolo  dell'autore e del critico nel nuovo libero mercato/mondo dell'arte.
Descrive la nuova figura del critico (che anche oggi distrugge certi lavori ) come una figura che dovrebb essere più moderata, che leggendo dovrebbe migliorare le proprie opere. (lui stesso passava ore, giorni, settimane, a riplasmare le proprie opere; allora era molto ammirato colui che scientificamente cercava di dare simmetria e armonia alla scrittura - il barocco rinascimentale non è più in voga.). Era un suo modo per regolamentare questa figura nella società.
Non dice cosa nuove; i modelli sono sempre i poeti latini.

Pope si sentiva minacciato da Rub Street (zona in cui abitavano i poeti / autori popolari/critici improvvisati).

Ora siamo in un'epoca post moderna della critica, quasi anarchica.

Questa poesia ha lo scopo di divertire con la satira ma allo stesso tempo di insegnare con la sua capacità di coinvolgere il lettore.