Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair of rhyming pentameter lines can carry an argument, a joke, a moral judgment, a portrait, a burst of in…
“The life of a Wit is a warfare upon earth; and the present spirit of the world is such, that to attempt to serve it one must have the constancy of a martyr.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Wonder
Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, was born on 20 July 1304 in Arezzo, Tuscany, and died during the night of 18–19 July 1374 at Arquà, near Padua. He stands among the decisive makers of European literary culture: a poet whose Italian lyrics established an enduring language of desire; a Latin author who sought to restore the prestige and moral seriousness of classical letters; a tireless correspondent a…
“I cannot get enough of books. I may already have more than I need, yet with books, as with other things, success in finding them only whets the desire for more.”
Neighbourhood:
Italian Renaissance Poets, Love Poets, Medieval Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
