Pope Poems

A beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets selection of the works of Alexander Pope, the greatest English poet of his age. Alexander Pope is one of the most-quoted poets in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations; he is the source of such immortal gems as "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," and "To err is human, to forgive, divine." Celebrated for his incisive satires, most famously "The Rape of the Lock" and "The Dunciad," and for his philosophical verse, including the monumental "An Essay on Man," Pope united irony and wit with deep insight into human nature. His moral vision clothed itself in unparalleled technical excellence; Pope perfected the form of the heroic couplet and gave us a translation of Homer that is a lasting work of art in its own right. This anthology presents a pocket-sized selection of the best work of this major poet.

Poetry.

Cultural Constructions of Madness in the Eighteenth Century deals with the (mis)representation of insanity through a substantial range of literary forms and figures from across the eighteenth century and beyond. Chapters cover the representation, distortion, sentimentalization and elevation of insanity, and such associated issues as gender, personal identity, and performance, in some of the best, as well as some of the least, known writers of the period. A selection of visual material, including works by Hogarth, Rowlandson, and Gillray, is also discussed. While primarily adopting a literary focus, the work is informed throughout by an alertness to significant issues of medical and psychiatric history.

The Poems of Alexander Pope is a multi-volume edition of the poetry of Alexander Pope (1688–1744) resulting from a thorough reappraisal of his work, from composition through to reception. The annotations and headnotes are full and informative, and the layout is designed to enable the reader to navigate easily between the poems, the record of variants and the editorial commentary. The poems are presented in chronological order of publication, with original capitalisation, italicisation, punctuation and spelling preserved. A record of variants to each poem illustrates the changes Pope made in subsequent editions, and full editorial annotation sets the poems in appropriate literary, historical and cultural contexts. This volume contains the poetry that appeared between 1709 and 1714, including the Pastorals and the ‘Rape of the Locke’. Much of the publication history of these poems shows Pope collaborating with the major writers and publishers of his time, as might be expected of a writer whose preparation for a literary career was so meticulous. But Pope was also beginning to establish himself on his own account, publishing (at first anonymously) a substantial statement of ideas, An Essay on Criticism. Another separate pamphlet, Windsor-Forest, constituted his distinctive contribution to the heavy freight of ‘Peace’ poems prompted by the Treaty of Utrecht. In all, the poems presented in this volume reveal an engagement with the literary and publishing industry that is at once amenable and independent.