278. (Alexander Pope)

Much that is felt to be absent in Pope’s great poems—The Rape of the Lock, The Moral Epistles—is a source … More

258. (John Dryden)

For John Dryden, the world tends towards fusion and confusion and it is for the poet to establish distinctions and … More

Since both are masters of the heroic couplet, both scathing satirists, how, it might be asked, does Dryden achieve effects … More

Wordsworth, conceding that he knew some thousand lines of Pope’s poetry by heart, set him nonetheless “at the foot of … More

Whatever else its relationship to genre, wit is a particular way of coping with the world’s fragility, its tendency to … More

Among the etchings on display at the MFA’s recent Goya exhibit, one from the series of Caprichos depicts an old woman, sat … More