Alexander Pope

The poem turns a society quarrel over a stolen lock of hair into a mock-epic adventure. Pope's expanded 1714 version uses heroic couplets, sylphs, card games, and battle language to satirize aristocratic manners.

Pope mastered rhymed iambic pentameter couplets, using them for wit, balance, and sharp moral judgment. Works such as An Essay on Criticism and The Dunciad show how tightly he could compress argument into paired lines.

Pope translated Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English heroic couplets in the early 18th century. The Iliad translation was a major financial and literary success and helped secure his independence as a writer.

Pope wrote satire in a competitive London print culture where critics, publishers, and rival writers attacked one another publicly. The Dunciad turned many of those quarrels into a large comic poem about bad writing and cultural decline.