Alexander+Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an eighteenth-century English poet, most known for his satirical verse. Alexander Pope was born to Edith Pope and Alexander Pope Senior on 21 May 1688. His father was a linen merchant, and both parents were both catholics, so of course he was too. Popes education was affected by the penal law (straffeloven), which banned Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, or holding public office on pain of perpetual imprisonment. Still he attended to two Catholic schools in London, even though such schools were illegal. He was taught to read by his aunt.

In 1700, his family moved to a small estate at the countryside in Binfield, Berkshire. He has described this countryside in his poem //Windsor Forest//. Around this time, his formal education ended, but from then on the he educated himself by reading works by classical writers, especially work from Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dryden. Also satirists like Horace and Juvenal. He also studied many languages and read works by poets from all over Europe. After about five years of this study, he came into contact with people form the London Literary Society, and became friends with other big poets, like John Caryll, who introduced him to William Wycherle and William Walsh. These two Williams helped to make popes first major work //The Pastorals.//

Alexander Pope had from the age of 12 suffered from health problems, especially Pott's disease, which is a form of tuberculosis that affects the bone. This disease deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a hunchback, and a height of 1,37 m. It also caused him other health problems, including breathing difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal pain. On 30 May 1744 Alexander Pope died, he became 56 years old. He was never married, but he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. He did have one lover, his lifelong friend, Martha Blount. He is the third most frequently quoted writer in //The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations//, after Shakespear and Tennyson. Alexander Pope´s massive literary output included much-admired translations of both the //Iliad// and the //Odyssey//, but his most famous poem is about a bizarre domestic incidents. He makes fun of these incidents, which also is a sign of neoclassicism.

He is best known for his translation of Homer and his use of the heroic couplet.

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