Alexander Pope: A Classicist With Romantic Passion

Alexander Pope is the most distinctive neoclassicist poet in theEnlightenment England.He had written many works in his life, such as Pastorals, Windsor Forest, The Rape of the Lock, The Messiah, The Dying Christian to his Soul, The Temple of Fame, and Elegy on the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. An Essay on Criticism was first written in prose, and in which a maturity of judgment, a clarity of thought and a condensation of style were all fully demonstrated.Classicism is an art movement and an aesthetic attitude towards the art, literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Neoclassicism bases itself on a cynical view of humanism, in the realm of the arts, a general necessity for rules and formulas to restrain human impulses. Though the poetry and prose of the time was intended for entertainment, it often had the dual purpose of advising or instructing as well. At the same time, the classicists' creation is under the protection of absolute power of king. Their common artistic features are as following: Advocating the authority of King and the unity of nation; Advocating rationality, depressing individual passions; fulfilling the duties of citizen; imitating the ancient and establishing uniformed art principles.Although Pope's death was regarded as the end of a nightmare by some men, more people commemorated him confidently with a fair evaluation of his works and his life. In the 19th century, the poetic style of neoclassicism became the target of criticism. In the 20th century, as Romanticism was fading away, Pope's poems gradually drew more and more attention, which led to the rise of his reputation, with his. merits being discovered and his fame as a distinguished figure being established in the history of English poetry. In the application of "the Heroic Couplet", nobody can...