Bring out the qualities of Pope as a classical poet with reference to The Rape of the Lock

Or, What do you consider to be the most excellent qualities of Pope’s poetry? illustrate from your reading.

Or, To what qualities does Pope owe his position as an English classicist?

Answer: The term ‘classic’ is referred to a particular kind of literature that is best in its type, especially the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. That literature was called classic because it was the best in content and form and the authors were the masters who were followed by the later generations of writers.

The great poet Alexander Pope belonged to the neoclassical age. He is considered a pseudo classic bet he followed the matter and manner, the subject, and form of the ancient classics. The literature of the classical writers was a mirror of the then society and they had a moral or a didactic view Pope sincerely imitated the classical writers and their writings. So in this sense, Pope is a classic. Goethe Said “Everything that is good in literature in classical” Pope’s The Rape of the Lock is a widely popular mock-epic that has achieved enormous applause both home and abroad. In The Rape of the Lock, he has imitated and parodied the subject and form of the classical writers like Horace, Virgil, Horner, and Milton. In The Rape of the Lock, the poet has followed almost all the epic conventions like the grand style; underworld journey, invocation to the muse, division of the poem into books or cantos, description of soldiers preparing for battles, description of heroic deeds, Account of great sea voyage. Participation of Deities or the supernatural Machinery in the action etc. Pope has wilfully and consciously done it on a miniature scale because his object in writing the poem was to mock or satirize the follies, frivolities, and vanities of the 18th-century people and thus correct them. As the poet has maintained the epic genie and followed the great epics of the classical writers, Pope can be termed a classic.

Alexander Pope can be called a classic in the sense that he enjoyed the highest status among the literati circles of his age. His literary works stood in a class by themselves and held a higher position in literature than his contemporaries. He is still unsurpassed in his power of satire and in his skill in using words. Maybe that he is not a Milton or a Shakespeare but in his own field says Lowell, he still stands unapproachably alone. John Dennis said, “He (P) has said in the best words what we all know and feel but cannot express, and has made that classical, which in weaker hands would be commonplace.”

Pope always emphasized reason, wit, and good sense. Rationality and intellectuality were more important to him than the external charm or physical beauty. Samuel Johnson said that Pope has an extraordinary quality and ‘New things are made familiar and familiar things are made new” by him.

Cardinal Newman aptly commented on Pope, “he expresses what all feel, but all cannot say, and his sayings pass into proverbs smartest his people and his phrases become household words and idioms of their daily use”

In view of the above it may be said that belonging to the neo-classical age, Alexander Pope was a classic in his thought, his genius, and his form and theme.