Alexander Pope Quiz – Flashcards

a couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentamenter and written in an elevated style ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill, Appear in writing or in judging ill;

A classification of a poem's meter when most (though certainly not all) of the feet are iambs. Iambic pentameter is the most natural meter for English poetry. da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

First follow nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchang'd and universal Light, Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of art Art from that fund each just supply provides, Works without show, and without pomp presides: In some fair body thus th' informing soul With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole, Each Motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains; It self unseen, but in th' effects, remains.

A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty").

Terms for a literary form that parodies the epic by treating a trivial subject in the "grand style" or uses the epic formulas to make a trivial subject ridiculous by ludicrously overstating it. Usually the characteristics of the classical epic are employed: for example, the invocation; grandiose speeches of the heroes; descriptions of warriors and battles; the use of the Homeric simile; and the involvement of supernatural machinery. Pope's The Rape of the Lock is perhaps the finest mock heroic poem in English, satirizing in polished verse the trivialities of polite society.

Asks us to compare small things with great Parodies and echoes such epics as the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost Uses familiar epic conventions: Statement of theme Invocation Supernatural characters (or "machinery") Arming of the warrior Battles Journey to the underworld Laughingly criticizes the triviality of this upper-class world

a form of satire in which trivial subjects, characters or events are treated with the elevated language and elaborate devices characteristic of the heroic style.

Roman Catholic (could not attend university, vote, hold public office) A man of letters: "first English writer to build a lucrative, lifelong career by publishing his works" (Norton 2493) Stigmatized his literary enemies in his works Deplored what he saw as the "vulgarization of taste and the arts," which he attributed to new reading public (2494) Champion of traditional values

An Essay on Criticism is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744). It is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets. The poem first appeared in 1711, but was written in 1709, and it is clear from Pope's correspondence[1] that many of the poem's ideas had existed in prose form since at least 1706. It is a verse essay written in the Horatian mode and is primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope's contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice, and represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age.