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From
From the
the Essay
Essay on
on
Criticism
Alexander
Alexander Pope
Pope
1. The poet :
Alexander Pope was born in London and from the age of twelve he was
moved by the ambition to write a great heroic poem. He was influenced by the
great poets preceded him. He wrote two long poems: the Essay on Criticism and
the Essay in Man and they attracted a great deal of attention and made him
famous throughout Europe.
2. The poem :
3. Introduction :
An Essay on Criticism was the first major poem written by the English
writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744). However, despite the title, the poem is not
as much an original analysis as it is a compilation of Pope's various literary
opinions. It is a poem in which Pope attempts to lay down in verse the rules of
'good' art and 'good' criticism.
b) paraphrase :
- fix'd : defined
- limits : boundaries
- fit : suitable
- wisely : with wisdom
- curb'd : limited, controlled
- pretending wit : pretending to have intelligence and know more
- gains : wins, takes grounds
- plains : areas of flat, open land
Pope declares that Nature has defined the correct limits of everything
without needing the intelligence of man to help her. Nature designed the ocean
so that it eats into the sand in some places and leaves wide sandy beaches in
others.
(C) figures of speech :
As for man: he cannot understand events and feelings while his memory of
them is still strong. But, on the other hand, when time passes and his
imagination begins to interfere with his memories, the reality of those memories
slips away.
- genius : intelligence
- fit : suit
- vast : great, large
- bounded : limited
- peculiar : particular
- confined : limited
Art and knowledge are vast and man's intelligence is limited. Most people
can do well in only one thing. Sometimes, indeed, they excel in only one part of
one thing.
(D) Commentary:
1. The whole poem is written in heroic couplets; the form which Pope
worked in most and which he polished and brought to perfection. The
heroic couplet consists of two rhyming lines of verse. It is usually in
iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme of this extract is
A A, B B, C C, D D, A A, E E, F F, G G.
A heroic couplet usually carries complete sense within itself even though it
connects to the rest of the poem; it expresses a complete idea. This is one
reason why many of Pope's couplets have become known as 'epigrams', i.e.
]sayings rather like proverbs in that they are a concise and clever expression
of a general truth, e.g.:
Like kings we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more.
Mr Wael Salama | Dekernes Language Schools 4
The Bright Way
Selection of Poetry 1st secondary
2. The opening lines of the passage embody Pope's belief in the essential
Tightness and wisdom of Nature. In another poem, he proclaims that:
3. He continues through several line to develop and re-express one idea; the
central idea in the passage: each man would do well to stick to what he
knows.
4. Pope uses visual images such as the image of the ocean eating into the
land on the one hand and leaving wide sandy beaches on the other; or
that of the king trying to conquer new lands. But he makes no startlingly
original use of poetic figures. There is a metaphor in lines 7 and 8 where
he speaks of the 'imagination' as a 'sun' with 'warm beams' and of the
'memories' as wax figures 'melting' away.