Ruth Mazo Karras argued that “the acquisition of masculinity in the European later Middle Ages was primarily a matter of proving oneself against others.” Strong male characters in texts such as Beowulf and Paradise Lost demonstrate that this...

In Pope's "Epistle: To a Lady of the Characteristics of Women", he condemns the "wise wretch" of a woman who is not only too wise, but has "too much spirit", "too much quickness" and does "too much thinking". He bitterly exposes what "Nature...

Pope's "An Essay on Man" can be read as a self-conscious consideration of the idea of formal systems, both at the level of the poem and of the world. Pope moves philosophically from the lowest- to the highest-ranked levels of being and back,...

Alexander Pope is known for his scathing but intelligent critiques of high English society. His acclaimed poem The Rape of the Lock does support female passivity and subordination in marriage; however, the fact that they are endorsed in Pope's...

One of Pope's most fundamental premises in The Dunciad is the idea that the demise of the word cannot be blamed solely on the Grub Street hacks but also on academicians at large. Not only does the 'uncreating word' of Chaos (IV 653) pose as a...

On the surface, "The Rape of the Lock", by Alexander Pope, appears to be a mild satire on the recent rise in materialism and the specifically female habit of excessive consumption. Originally published in 1712, the poem was situated among numerous...

In The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope utilizes a reversal of gender roles to sculpt a subtle societal critique of the leisurely life of belles and beaux. Through this satirical device, Pope exposes the aristocratic pretensions of this heavily...

Aphra Behn and Alexander Pope both present various situations of crisis and uprising in their works, Oroonoko and The Rape of the Lock, respectively. Although the nature and intensity of the crisis situations are very different, both authors use...

The assertion of the first epistle of Pope's “An Essay on Man” is that man has too narrow a perspective to truly understand God's plan, and his goal is to “vindicate the ways of God to man” (Pope 16). The ignorance of man befits his place in the...

The verse of Alexander Pope often succeeds in conveying far more meaning than its words, taken at face value, might suggest. In The Rape of the Lock particularly, what at first seems like a light-hearted ribbing of upper class preoccupations, soon...

‘The true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction. And he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender, than the physician to the patient, when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease’

Satire is a difficult,...

Alexander Pope’s poems ‘An Essay on Criticism’ and ‘Windsor Forest – To the Right Honourable George Lord Landsdowe’ compared with the critical extract of William Wordsworth’s Preface ‘Poems Volumes 1’ creates a basis in which one can demonstrate...

Independence and personal freedom are fundamental values of both entire societies and individual life stories. However, within Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, contrasting physical...

Throughout both The Rape of the Lock and Gulliver’s Travels, Pope and Swift both place the faults and vices of 18th Century Britain at the thematic forefront of their writing, with a particular focus on satirizing the upper echelons of the...

‘From Pope’s perspective as satirist’, writes Michael Seidel, ‘London is stuffed with the bodies of dunces and awash in printer’s ink’, hitting upon the early 18th century’s proliferation of print culture and its wider implications that Pope was...

In some eighteenth century works, the emphasis on alluding to and drawing inspiration from the past proved to be one of the most effective methods in composing a satirical piece. Appearing in two forms, Juvenal or Horatian, a satire is “a poem, or...

The literary critics Alexander Pope and Immanuel Kant put critics to the test as they perform the task of critiquing critiques. In Pope’s Essay on Criticism, he provides the readers and critics with critique of critics in poetry form which in...

The gorgeous and charming protagonist Belinda of “Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope goes to great lengths to beautify her outer appearance. Pope’s description of her elaborate beauty ritual is a clear sign of this- her primping process is...

‘Ye who amid this feverish world would wear/ a body free of pain, of cares a mind,/ Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air’(JOHN ARMSTRONG) Trinity 2017.

Here, John Armstrong connects the Restoration city to ideas of suffering, evident in his...