Paraphrases from Chaucer

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare. By the mid-18th century new fashions in poetry emerged. A decade after Pope’s death, Joseph Warton claimed that Pope’s style of poetry was not the most excellent form of the art. The Romantic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent towards his work. Though Lord Byron identified Pope as one of his chief influences (believing his scathing satire of contemporary English literature English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to be a continuance of Pope’s tradition), William Wordsworth found Pope’s style fundamentally too decadent a representation of the human condition. George Gilfillan in his study of 1856 described Pope’s talent as ‘a rose peering into the summer air, fine, rather than powerful, In the 20th century Pope’s reputation was revived. Pope’s work was found to be full of references to the people and places of his time, and these aided people’s understanding of the past. The postwar period stressed the power of Pope’s poetry, recognising that Pope’s immersion in Christian and Biblical culture lent depth to his poetry. Maynard Mack thought highly of Pope’s poetry, arguing that Pope’s moral vision demanded as much respect as his technical excellence. In the years 1953–1967 the production of the definitive Twickenham edition of Pope’s poems was published in ten volumes.