A dispute over a lock of hair attracted the attention of Alexander Pope, the great poet. Lord Peter had cut off a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor. And Pope wrote ‘The Rape of the Lock’, a mock epic that poked fun at high society. It first published in 1712, with a revised version published in 1714.
In May, 1709, Pope’s Pastorals was published. This brought Pope instant fame, and was followed by ‘An Essay on Criticism’, published in May 1711, which was equally well received.
At the time the poem was published, the heroic couplet style in which it was written was a moderately new genre of poetry. Heroic couplet consists of rhyming pair of lines. Pope’s most ambitious work. ‘An Essay on Criticism’ was an attempt to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. It gives the poet’s views on whether poetry should be natural, or written according to set rules.
He translated both the ‘Illiad’ and the ‘Odyssey’. Pope’s translation of the ‘Illiad’, was published between 1715 and 1720 and the ‘Odyssey’, in 1726.
‘An Essay on Man’ is another famous philosophical poem by Alexander Pope.
Alexander Pope was born in England in 1688, and died on 30th May, 1744.
