Riassunto esame Letteratura Inglese 3, prof. Saglia, libro consigliato Windsor Forest, Pope

ALEXANDER POPE st th

Was the most important and successful poet during the 1 2 or 3 decades of the 18 century

- in England.

His poetry was an expression of the RATIONAL and the NEOCLASSICISM.

- He wrote a mock heroic poem and philosophical poems such as An Essay on Man. His

- production is varied.

He also collaborated with many writers of his period such as Jonathan Swift.

- He was also a politicised writer: for him poetry was also a political instrument and he was

- conservative (Tory) and a supporter of the Tudor dynasty (and Queen Anne in particular).

LIFE (Norton): ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

 Pope is the only important writer of his generation who was a man of letters because he

could not, as a Roman Catholic, attend a university, vote, or hold public office.

 The translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which he undertook for profit as well as for

fame, gave him ample means to live the life of an independent suburban gentleman. Pope

was the first English writer to build a lifelong career by publishing his works.

 Ill health plagued Pope almost from birth. He suffered from tuberculosis of the bone and

violent headaches and required constant attention from servants. He was always a master at

making the best of what he had.

 Around 1700 his father, a retired London merchant, moved to a small property in Windsor

Forest. There, young Pope completed his education by reading whatever he pleased and he

began to write verse. He was already an accomplished poet in his teens; no English poet has

ever been more precocious.

 Pope's first striking success as a poet was An Essay on Criticism (1711), a didactic poem

which brought him Joseph Addison's approval and a personal attack from the critic John

Dennis.

 The Rape o f the Lock, a mock epic (first published in 1712 and later in 1714) proved the

author a master not only of metrics and of language but also of witty, urbane satire.

 He was interested in natural beauty and love. The Pastorals (1709), his first publication, and

Windsor Forest (1713) abound in visual imagery and descriptive passages of ordered nature;

he was an amateur painter.

 The "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and Eloisa to Abelard, published in

1717, dwell on the pangs of unhappy lovers (Pope himself never married).

 He translated Homer, edited Shakespeare, and in middle age, he wrote ethical and satirical

poetry.

 Pope's early poetry brought him to the attention of literary men, with whom he began to

associate in the masculine world of coffeehouse and tavern. He came to know, among many

others, William Congreve and Joseph Addison.

 All were Whigs. Pope could ignore politics. But after the fall of the Whigs in 1710 and the

formation of the Tory government, party loyalties bred bitterness among the wits. By 1712,

Pope had made the acquaintance of another group of writers, all Tories, who were soon his

intimate friends: Jonathan Swift.

 In 1714 this group, at the instigation of Pope, formed a club for satirizing all sorts of false

learning. The friends proposed to write jointly the biography of a fool whose life and

opinions would be a commentary on educated nonsense. The real importance of the club,

however, is that it fostered a satiric temper that would be expressed in such mature works of

the friends as Gulliver's Travels, The Beggar's Opera, and The Dunciad.

 His very success as a poet made enemies who were to plague him in pamphlets, verse

satires, and squibs in the journals throughout his entire literary career. He was attacked for

his writings, his religion, and his physical deformity.

 Pope's literary warfare began in 1713, when he announced his intention of translating the

Iliad and sought subscribers to a deluxe edition of the work. Subscribers came in droves, but

the Whig writers did all they could to discredit the venture. It was successful.

 He took his revenge against Addison by writing a damaging portrait of him (under the name

of Atticus).

 In The Dunciad (1728) Pope stigmatized his literary enemies and the new commercial spirit

of the nation that was corrupting not only the arts but, as Pope saw it, the national life itself.

 In the 1730s Pope moved on to philosophical, ethical, and political subjects in An Essay on

Man, the Epistles to Several Persons, and the Imitations o f Horace. The reigns of George I

and George II appeared to him, as to Swift and other Tories, a period of rapid moral,

political, and cultural deterioration.

 Pope assumed the role of the champion of traditional values: of right reason, humanistic

learning, sound art, good taste, and public virtue.

 The bulk of his satire can be read and enjoyed without much biographical information.

Usually he used fictional or type names, although he most often had an individual in mind—

Sappho, Atticus—and when he named individuals, his purpose was to raise his victims to

emblems of folly and vice.

 Pope was a master of style. His verse is notable for its rhythmic variety, despite the

apparently rigid metrical unit—the heroic couplet—in which he wrote; for the precision of

meaning and the harmony of his language; and for the union of maximum conciseness with

maximum complexity. His poetry is full of musical combinations of words, alliteration and

assonance.

WINDSOR FOREST:

It’s a celebration of England and Great Britain.

- It’s a poem about peace and prosperity but it’s born out of war.

- It combines an internal point of view with and external one.

- It’s a descriptive poem: it concentrates on the woods around Windsor Castle, the residence

- of the monarch of England. There is a lot of natural description: it’s a local descriptive text.

At the same time it’s a celebration of the greatness of the nation and the Queen.

st

There’s a political and ideological message. Pope wrote and published the 1 version in

- 

1707 and in 1713 interesting because it was the year of the Peace of Utrecht which

marked the end of the war of Spanish Succession.

In Spain the last Habsburg king Charles II died without children so a war broke out

o between France and the Bourbon dynasty and Austria and the Habsburg dynasty to

decide the next king of Spain. The war was long (15 y) and in the end the only

country that lost was Spain. The French imposed the King in Spain, The Austrians

took all the territories of Spain in Europe and England obtained Gibraltar, the island

of Minorca territories in North America and the Caribbean, the Asiento (only British



ships could transport slaves to South America) the English projected themselves

globally.

Pope rewrote the poem keeping an eye on what was happening in Utrecht. The poem is

- dedicated to the English diplomat who took part in this negotiation.

The poem is patriotic and royalist: it celebrates the nation and the monarchy as a symbol of

- this development/expansion/greatness.

It has got 3 sections:

- st

1 : natural description of the Windsor Forest and the landscape around it.

o nd

2 : historical excursus of the whole history o England and Britain from the Norman

o Conquest (1066) to the execution of Charles I.

rd

3 : global panorama, the camera opens out to consider the position of England and

o Britain globally.

Windsor Castle is the symbol of the British monarchy and the continuity. It was first created

- 

by the Norman. It is the longest inhabited royal residence stability.



Forest: trees rooted in the ground solidity and continuity.

- Metrical structure: heroic verse made up of iambic pentameters rhyming AABBCC.

-

st

1 passage: 

It begins with a picture of the Garden of Eden Biblical Garden.

- OPPOSITION and HARMONISATION of opposites in terms of

- LANGUAGE (agree-differ)

 SEMANTIC FIELD (light-darkness)

 OXYMORON (harmoniously confused)

 CULTURAL TRADITIONS (biblical and Greco-roman mythology)

 Destructive forces (war ships) vs productive forces (fertility)



Oaks = ships, it’s a synecdoche (material for the object). It’s the traditional tree whose wood

- is used to make ships. It’s associated with MARITIME POWER AND COMMERCIAL

POWER.

Territorial power “the Realms commanded”.

- Mythological celebration of the fertility of England and Britain: sheep, fruits, vegetation and

- cereal crops.

nd

2 passage:

The speaker is the personification of the river Thames which is like a prophet and can see

- the future.

NB: the river Thames is a double symbol:

- Historic river, it’s part of English history

 It flows, it’s a symbol of movement

  it’s a combination of opposites

Idea of bringing to the other nations military control, light of religion and civilisation.

- The river is a global waterway for GLOBAL COMMERCE: all the treasures will be created

- for England, the spices, the treasures of the sea and of the earth. England will accumulate



them and bring them back to London enrichment and expansion. The ships bring there

weapons, conquest and religion and will bring back treasures.

In the future, all the distant lands will admire our glory. NB: America too will go back to

- admire our greatness.

Important is the element of CONTINUITY AND TRADITION: we have the picture of

New

development moving towards the future horizons and possibilities.

The panorama becomes global BUT London is the EPICENTRE. The tone is IPERIALISTIC.

Contradiction about commerce:

It was seen as a force of CIVILIZATION: people get to know each other and everybody

- collaborates in the same trading network. It’s positive because it unites all mankind.

At the same time however, it is COMPETITION, so it divides nations because each nation

- competes with other nations to be more successful economically.

Pope maintained the positive connotations of commerce, but what the prevails it the sense that

England is the Queen of Universal Commerce. The commerce is English.

JOSEPH ADDISON - O FORTUNATOS MERCATORES, 1716, “The Freeholder”:

Essay which celebrates commerce as the pillar of the nation.

- It’s meant for a different audience: a public who reads prose, who doesn’t have an enormous

- cultural preparation and who wants practical and useful information.

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It’s an example of 18 century periodical essay

- Fixed by Addison and Steal, 2 writers who began to launch new periodicals “The

o Spectator”,... together or individually in which they invented/copyrighted a new kind

of prose: short pieces on 1 specific topic with a variety of subjects, all related to

present preoccupations and all suited the needs of a middle class public (bourgeois).

The style is clear, logical, informative and offering useful information.

o These periodicals were often called magazines because they are storehouses of

o information (Italian “magazzino”).

Magazines and periodical essays contributed to the formation