The Rape of the Lock and Other Major
Writings is a collection of Alexander Pope's
greatest works, edited with an introduction by Leo
Damrosch in Penguin Classics. Alexander Pope was the
greatest English poet of his age, whose acerbic insights
into human nature have entered the language, and whose
verse still astonishes with its energy and inventiveness
centuries after his death. This new selection of Pope's
work follows the path of his poetic genius over his
lifetime. It contains early poems including the masterly
mock-epic 'The Rape of the Lock', which satirizes a
notorious society scandal through glorious heroic
couplets, the brilliantly aphoristic 'An Essay on
Criticism' and excerpts from his translation of the
Iliad. Later poems represented include Pope's ironic
adaptations of Horace's Epistles, Satires and
Odes, and the remarkable 'Dunciad', a stinging
attack on his literary rivals and the mediocrity of Grub
Street hacks. Here too are selected prose works and
letters from Pope to his contemporaries such as John Gay
and Jonathan Swift. This edition contains a
wide-ranging introduction that elucidates Pope's life,
poetic art and contemporary contexts, as well as
separate introductions to each piece, a chronology,
further reading, a biography and extensive notes.
Alexander Pope (1[zasłonięte]688-17) was born in London in
1688, the son of a well-to-do Roman Catholic cloth
merchant. In 1709 he launched his career with a set of
four pastorals, followed by An Essay on
Criticism, Windsor Forest and the mock-epic
Rape of the Lock, which cemented his reputation
as the greatest poet of the age. Later works included
the Dunciad, Epistles to Several Persons
and the ambitious Essay on Man. If you enjoyed
The Rape of the Lock, you might like Jonathan
Swift's Gulliver's Travels, also available in
Penguin Classics.
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