1.
Alexander the Great
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Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of twenty and he was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of historys most successful military commanders. During his youth, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16, after Philips assassination in 336 BC, he succeeded his father to the throne and inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. Alexander was awarded the generalship of Greece and used this authority to launch his fathers Panhellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia, in 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid Empire and began a series of campaigns that lasted ten years. Following the conquest of Anatolia, Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of battles, most notably the battles of Issus. He subsequently overthrew Persian King Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety, at that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. He sought to reach the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea and invaded India in 326 BC and he eventually turned back at the demand of his homesick troops. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, the city that he planned to establish as his capital, without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in the establishment of several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexanders surviving generals, Alexanders legacy includes the cultural diffusion which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism. He founded some twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria in Egypt, Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mold of Achilles, and he features prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. He became the measure against which military leaders compared themselves, and he is often ranked among the most influential people in human history. He was the son of the king of Macedon, Philip II, and his wife, Olympias. Although Philip had seven or eight wives, Olympias was his wife for some time. Several legends surround Alexanders birth and childhood, sometime after the wedding, Philip is said to have seen himself, in a dream, securing his wifes womb with a seal engraved with a lions image. Plutarch offered a variety of interpretations of dreams, that Olympias was pregnant before her marriage, indicated by the sealing of her womb. On the day Alexander was born, Philip was preparing a siege on the city of Potidea on the peninsula of Chalcidice. That same day, Philip received news that his general Parmenion had defeated the combined Illyrian and Paeonian armies, and it was also said that on this day, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, burnt down. This led Hegesias of Magnesia to say that it had burnt down because Artemis was away, such legends may have emerged when Alexander was king, and possibly at his own instigation, to show that he was superhuman and destined for greatness from conception
2.
Victor Hugo
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Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers, outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables,1862, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,1831. In France, Hugo is known primarily for his collections, such as Les Contemplations. He produced more than 4,000 drawings and also campaigned for causes such as the abolition of capital punishment. He is buried in the Panthéon in Paris and his legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency. Victor Hugo was the son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet, his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo. He was born in 1802 in Besançon in the region of Franche-Comté. Hugos childhood was a period of political turmoil. Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor of the French two years after Hugos birth, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before his 13th birthday, since Hugos father was an officer, the family moved frequently and Hugo learned much from these travels. On a childhood trip to Naples, Hugo saw the vast Alpine passes and the snowy peaks, the magnificently blue Mediterranean. Though he was five years old at the time, he remembered the six-month-long trip vividly. They stayed in Naples for a few months and then headed back to Paris, at the beginning of her marriage, Hugos mother Sophie followed her husband to posts in Italy and Spain. Thereafter she dominated Hugos education and upbringing, as a result, Hugos early work in poetry and fiction reflect her passionate devotion to both King and Faith. It was only later, during the leading up to Frances 1848 Revolution. Young Victor fell in love and, against his mothers wishes, because of his close relationship with his mother, Hugo waited until after her death to marry Adèle in 1822. Adèle and Victor Hugo had their first child, Léopold, in 1823, on 28 August 1824, the couples second child, Léopoldine was born, followed by Charles on 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, and Adèle on 24 August 1830. Hugos eldest and favourite daughter, Léopoldine, died aged 19 in 1843, on 4 September, she drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by her heavy skirts when a boat overturned. Her young husband also died trying to save her, the death left her father devastated, Hugo was travelling with his mistress at the time in the south of France, and first learned about Léopoldines death from a newspaper he read in a café
3.
Tragedy
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Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. In the wake of Aristotles Poetics, tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, in the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects against models of tragedy, taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word tragedy appears to have used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγῳδία, contracted from trag-aoidiā = goat song, scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animals ritual sacrifice. In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis says that the form of the word was trygodia from trygos and ode. There is some dissent to the origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested, friedrich Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book The Birth of Tragedy. Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the genre developed. Scott Scullion writes, There is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as song for the prize goat, and as prize was established the billy goat, the clearest is Eustathius 1769.45, They called those competing tragedians, clearly because of the song over the billy goat. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days, each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. The four plays sometimes featured linked stories, only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the air, on the side of a hill. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, the theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people
4.
Sonnet
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A sonnet is a poem in a specific form which originated in Italy, Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto, by the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history, writers of sonnets are sometimes called sonneteers, although the term can be used derisively. The sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Emperor Frederick II, guittone dArezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he founded the Siculo-Tuscan School, or Guittonian school of poetry. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti, wrote sonnets, other fine examples were written by Michelangelo. The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the included two parts that together formed a compact form of argument. First, the octave, forms the proposition, which describes a problem, or question, followed by a sestet, typically, the ninth line initiates what is called the turn, or volta, which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that dont strictly follow the structure, the ninth line still often marks a turn by signaling a change in the tone, mood. Later, the abba, abba pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets, for the sestet there were two different possibilities, cde, cde and cdc, cdc. In time, other variants on this scheme were introduced. Petrarch typically used an abba, abba pattern for the octave, in English, both the English or Shakespearean sonnet, and the Italian Petrarchan sonnet are traditionally written in iambic pentameter. Early twentieth-century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also wrote mostly Petrarchan sonnets, on His Blindness by Milton, gives a sense of the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, Most Sonnets in Dantes La Vita Nuova are Petrarchan. Chapter VII gives sonnet O voi che per la via, with two sestets and two quatrains, and Ch. VIII, Morte villana, with two sestets and two quatrains and it was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon. It employs the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d and this poem is historically interesting for its information on north Italian perspectives concerning the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the conflict between the Angevins and Aragonese for Sicily. It congratulates Robert of Naples on his recent victory, there are also two poorly regarded sonnets by the Italian Dante de Maiano. By the late 17th century poets on increasingly relied on stanza forms incorporating rhymed couplets, and by the 18th century fixed-form poems – and, in particular, the resulting versification – less constrained by meter and rhyme patterns than Renaissance poetry – more closely mirrored prose. The Romantics were responsible for a return to many of the poems used during the 15th and 16th centuries. The sonnet however was used until the Parnassians brought it back into favor
5.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
6.
Philip Sidney
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Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar, and soldier, who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesy, born at Penshurst Place, Kent, he was the eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and his younger brother, Robert was a statesman and patron of the arts, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1618. His younger sister, Mary, married Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and was a writer, translator, Sidney dedicated his longest work, the Arcadia, to her. After her brothers death, Mary reworked the Arcadia, which known as The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia. Philip was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford and he spent the next several years in mainland Europe, moving through Germany, Italy, Poland, the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria. On these travels, he met a number of prominent European intellectuals, returning to England in 1575, Sidney met Penelope Devereux, the future Lady Rich, though much younger, she would inspire his famous sonnet sequence of the 1580s, Astrophel and Stella. Her father, Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, is said to have planned to marry his daughter to Sidney, in England, Sidney occupied himself with politics and art. He defended his fathers administration of Ireland in a lengthy document, more seriously, he quarrelled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, probably because of Sidneys opposition to the French marriage, which de Vere championed. In the aftermath of episode, Sidney challenged de Vere to a duel. He then wrote a letter to the Queen detailing the foolishness of the French marriage. Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption, and Sidney prudently retired from court, during a 1577 diplomatic visit to Prague, Sidney secretly visited the exiled Jesuit priest Edmund Campion. Sidney had returned to court by the middle of 1581 and in 1584 was MP for Kent and that same year Penelope Devereux was married, apparently against her will, to Lord Rich. An early arrangement to marry Anne Cecil, daughter of Sir William Cecil, in 1583, he married Frances, teenage daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. In the same year, he made a visit to Oxford University with Giordano Bruno and his artistic contacts were more peaceful and more significant for his lasting fame. During his absence from court, he wrote Astrophel and Stella, somewhat earlier, he had met Edmund Spenser, who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to him. Both through his heritage and his personal experience, Sidney was a keenly militant Protestant. In the 1570s, he had persuaded John Casimir to consider proposals for a united Protestant effort against the Roman Catholic Church, in the early 1580s, he argued unsuccessfully for an assault on Spain itself
7.
Robert Browning
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Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, Brownings early career began promisingly, but was not a success. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period, in 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, who at the time was considerably better known than himself. So started one of historys most famous literary marriages and they went to live in Italy, a country he called my university, and which features frequently in his work. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women, the collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive, such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century. Brownings admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly The Ring and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, among living writers, Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series and A. S. Byatts Possession refer directly to Brownings work, today Brownings critically most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey and he was baptized on 14 June 1812, at Locks Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna and Robert Browning. His father was a clerk for the Bank of England. Brownings paternal grandfather was an owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies. Brownings father had sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Brownings mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee in Scotland, the evidence, however, is inconclusive either way. Roberts father, a collector, amassed a library of around 6,000 books. As such, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources and his mother, to whom he was very close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brothers companion in his later years and his father encouraged his childrens interest in literature and the arts
8.
The Faerie Queene
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The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I to III were first published in 1590, and then republished in 1596 together with books IV to VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form, it is one of the longest poems in the English language and the origin of a verse form that came to be known as Spenserian stanza. The Faerie Queene found such favor with Elizabeth I that Spenser was granted a pension for life amounting to £50 a year and this royal patronage helped the poem to such a level of success that it became Spensers defining work. Book I is centered on the virtue of Holiness as embodied in the Redcrosse Knight and he and his lady Una travel together as he fights the dragon Errour, then separate as the wizard Archimago tricks the Redcrosse Knight in a dream to think that Una is unchaste. After he leaves, the Redcrosse Knight meets Duessa, who feigns distress in order to entrap him, Duessa leads the Redcrosse Knight to captivity by the giant Orgoglio. Meanwhile, Una overcomes peril, meets Arthur, and finally finds and rescues the Redcrosse Knight from his capture, from Duessa, Una and Arthur help the Redcrosse Knight recover in the House of Holiness, there the Redcrosse Knight sees a vision of his future. He then returns Una to her parents castle, rescues them from a dragon, Book II is centred on the virtue of Temperance as embodied in Sir Guyon, who is tempted by the fleeing Archimago into nearly attacking the Redcrosse Knight. Guyon discovers a woman killing herself out of grief for having her lover tempted and bewitched by the witch Acrasia, Guyon swears a vow to avenge them and protect their child. Guyon on his quest starts and stops fighting several evil, rash, finally, they come to Acrasias Island and the Bower of Bliss, where Guyon resists temptations to violence, idleness, and lust. Guyon captures Acrasia in a net, destroys the Bower, Book III is centred on the virtue of Chastity as embodied in Britomart, a lady knight. Resting after the events of Book II, Guyon and Arthur meet Britomart and they separate as Arthur and Guyon leave to rescue Florimell, while Britomart rescues the Redcrosse Knight. Britomart reveals to the Redcrosse Knight that she is pursuing Sir Artegal because she is destined to marry him, the Redcrosse Knight defends Artegal and they meet Merlin, who explains more carefully Britomarts destiny to found the English monarchy. Britomart leaves and fights Sir Marinell, Arthur looks for Florimell, joined later by Sir Satyrane and Britomart, and they witness and resist sexual temptation. Britomart separates from them and meets Sir Scudamore, looking for his captured lady Amoret, Britomart alone is able to rescue Amoret from the wizard Busirane and reunite the lovers. Book IV is centred on the virtue of Friendship as embodied in Sir Cambell, Book V is centred on the virtue of Justice as embodied in Sir Artegal. Book VI is centred on the virtue of Courtesy as embodied in Sir Calidore, Spenser names Aristotle as his source for these virtues, though the influences of Thomas Aquinas and the traditions of medieval allegory can be observed as well. The unfinished seventh book appears to have represented the virtue of constancy, the Faerie Queene was written during the Reformation, a time of religious and political controversy
9.
Edmund Spenser
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Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse. He was deeply affected by Irish faerie mythology, which he knew from his home at Kilcolman and his genocidal tracts against Gaelic culture were war propaganda. His house was burned to the ground during the war, causing him to flee Ireland, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552, though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors School, while at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. In 1578, he became for a time secretary to John Young. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender and around the time married his first wife. They had two children, Sylvanus and Katherine, in July 1580, Spenser went to Ireland in service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. Spenser served under Lord Gray with Walter Raleigh at the Siege of Smerwick massacre, when Lord Grey was recalled to England, Spenser stayed on in Ireland, having acquired other official posts and lands in the Munster Plantation. Raleigh acquired other nearby Munster estates confiscated in the Second Desmond Rebellion, some time between 1587 and 1589, Spenser acquired his main estate at Kilcolman, near Doneraile in North Cork. He later bought a second holding to the south, at Rennie and its ruins are still visible today. A short distance away grew a tree, locally known as Spensers Oak until it was destroyed in a strike in the 1960s. Local legend has it that he penned some of The Faerie Queene under this tree. In 1590, Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The Faerie Queene, having travelled to London to publish and promote the work and he was successful enough to obtain a life pension of £50 a year from the Queen. By 1594, Spensers first wife had died, and in that year he married Elizabeth Boyle, the marriage itself was celebrated in Epithalamion. They had a son named Peregrine, in 1596, Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland. This piece, in the form of a dialogue, circulated in manuscript and it is probable that it was kept out of print during the authors lifetime because of its inflammatory content. The pamphlet argued that Ireland would never be totally pacified by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, in 1598, during the Nine Years War, Spenser was driven from his home by the native Irish forces of Aodh Ó Néill
10.
John Dryden
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John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made Englands first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in circles as the Age of Dryden. Walter Scott called him Glorious John, Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector of All Saints. He was a cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy Dryden lived in the village of Titchmarsh. In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a Kings Scholar where his headmaster was Dr. Richard Busby, having recently been re-founded by Elizabeth I, Westminster during this period embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and high Anglicanism. Whatever Drydens response to this was, he respected the headmaster. As a humanist public school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and this is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his later writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Drydens capacity for assimilation and this was also to be exhibited in his later works. Busby had first prayed for the King and then locked in his schoolboys to prevent their attending the spectacle, in 1650 Dryden went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. Though there is specific information on Drydens undergraduate years, he would most certainly have followed the standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric. In 1654 he obtained his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year, in June of the same year Drydens father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on. Returning to London during the Protectorate, Dryden obtained work with Cromwells Secretary of State and this appointment may have been the result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering. At Cromwells funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John Milton, shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas, a eulogy on Cromwells death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, in this work the interregnum is illustrated as a time of anarchy, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order. After the Restoration, as Dryden quickly established himself as the poet and literary critic of his day. Along with Astraea Redux, Dryden welcomed the new regime with two more panegyrics, To His Sacred Majesty, A Panegyric on his Coronation and To My Lord Chancellor and these, and his other nondramatic poems, are occasional—that is, they celebrate public events. Thus they are written for the rather than the self
11.
Alexander Pope
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Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare, Alexander Pope was born to Alexander Pope Senior, a linen merchant of Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, and his wife Edith, who were both Catholics. Ediths sister Christiana was the wife of the miniature painter Samuel Cooper. Pope was taught to read by his aunt, and went to Twyford School in about 1698/99 and he then went to two Catholic schools in London. Such schools, while illegal, were tolerated in some areas, in 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing Catholics from living within 10 miles of either London or Westminster, Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. He also studied languages and read works by English, French, Italian, Latin. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from the London literary society such as William Wycherley, William Congreve, Samuel Garth, William Trumbull, at Binfield, he also began to make many important friends. One of them, John Caryll, was twenty years older than the poet and had many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet and he also met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha, both of whom would remain lifelong friends. From the age of 12, he suffered health problems, such as Potts disease. His tuberculosis infection caused other problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes. He grew to a height of only 1.37 m. Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic, although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. Allegedly, his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover, in May,1709, Popes Pastorals was published in the sixth part of Tonsons Poetical Miscellanies. This brought Pope instant fame, and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. The aim of the club was to satirise ignorance and pedantry in the form of the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus and he also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim, during Popes friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addisons play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator
