POPE, ALESSANDRO. — English poet, born in London on 21 May 1688, died at Twickenham on 30 May 1744. He began his poetic career at an early age with the *Pastorals* (1709), imitating the classical poets who remained his models throughout his life, and whose study he promoted in the *Essay on Criticism* (1711).
He translated, with the collaboration of others, the Homeric poems (from 1715 onward): his imitation of Ovid reached its finest expression in the *Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard*, based on the famous correspondence of the two lovers, in which monastic life is depicted in the then-fashionable dark hues; his imitation of Horace produced the *Imitations of Horace* and several epistles to friends. Like Horace, Pope was above all a “satirist,” and his principal works in this vein are *The Rape of the Lock* (first ed., later greatly expanded, 1712), in which he paints a trivial episode of high society with sublime poetry; *The Dunciad* (1728), a violent satire against literary men, especially those who had offended him; and *An Essay on Man* (1733), a philosophical and moral work, not without merit in its vivid vignettes of everyday life.