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…
“Yet sure upon the whole, a bad Author deserves better usage than a bad Critic.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Wonder
Thomas Parnell, born in Dublin on 11 September 1679 and dead at Chester, England, on 24 October 1718, occupies a distinctive position in the literary culture of the early eighteenth century. He was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, poet, translator, essayist, and valued member of the brilliant circle that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. His name is often introduced through those greater…
“I am writing to you a long letter, but all the tediousness I feel in it is, that it makes me during the time think more intently of my being far from you.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Irish Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
