 build a furniture but that doesn't mean that you can build an entire wall. Little learning is a dangerous thing. Shivani, when will you understand this? Oh, hi people, welcome to my channel. I was just talking to my friend and you know she just watched a YouTube video on how to assemble a furniture and now she thinks she can be an architect. She can be a pro in all these stuff. And this is what we all do. We all tend to overestimate our abilities. We all know a little about things and we tend to overestimate our knowledge about certain things and that's what Alexander Pope said in one of his most famous work, essay on criticism. That little learning is a dangerous thing. This is one of the most famous and most quoted maxims and we have so many other maxims by Alexander Pope. In this video we are going to study Alexander Pope and some of his important works from point of view. So now let's talk about Mr Alexander Pope. Alexander Pope was born in a Catholic family as you can guess from his last name Pope. Anybody with the last name Pope will definitely be a Catholic. So he was a follower of Catholicism. He had suffered from this disease called Pots disease. For those of you who don't know I would like to tell you that Pots disease is a form of tibocallosis. So nowadays we have TB. At that time they used to call it Pots disease and due to this Pots disease he suffered from breathing problem and hunched back throughout his lifetime. He was also very short-ighted. He did not grow more than four feet and six inches. So really short and he was really upset about these things that he was short-ighted and he suffered from this disease due to which he decided that he would not go to school because people will mock at him. So he decided that he would enroll himself in his self-school and would study on his own. So he started reading classical works especially Homer and Virgil. Homer was a Greek classical writer whereas Virgil is a Roman classical writer. So he used to read those works by these prominent writers and you know he became so fascinated that almost all his work shows the influence of Homer and Virgil and almost all his work shows his love for classical text. He was writing in a period which is called neoclassical or enlightenment period. I would like to first explain what neoclassical actually means. Neoclassical has come from these two terms neo and classical. So neo means new classical means classical text classical works of those writers who were writing in the Greek and the Roman period. So neoclassical basically means that renewal of those writers when there was a there was a period in British history from 1700 to 1800 when all the prominent writers were actually reading the classical text and they were appreciating the writing style their form and structure and they started imitating them. So that is what gave it a name neoclassical new classical. So writing the classical text in a new way. Okay so that is what neoclassical period is all about and Alexander Pope was writing during this period. It was also a time of scientific development. I would rather say it was a time of scientific revolution. There were so many great scientists who were coming up and giving their own theories. We have Newton who was there at that time and he gave his own theories. So this was a period of scientific development and people started to believe that world can be known through sense, through logic, through reason. So they denounced superstition and they focused on skepticism. So skepticism, imperialism these were the dominant things that were during that period. Under this background Alexander Pope was writing. So you will find almost all his work talking about how reason and logic is important and how through reason and logic you can actually know the world. The first important work by Pope is Pestorals. Pestorals is a series of foreshort poems and it is based on Virgil's work. So we find how Virgil influenced Alexander Pope that even Alexander Pope's first work was an influence by Virgil. Also for those of you who don't know I would like to tell you that the work was written in heroic couplet and heroic couplet is basically rhyming couplet with iambic pentameter and if you are wondering what iambic pentameter is all about then you must go and watch my video on rhythm and meter in which I've clarified how iambic pentameter is formed, how it differs from trochaic exameter and how all these meter and rhythm influence a set of poetry. So that was about Pestorals. The second important work by Alexander Pope is his translation of Homer and this was a question in July 2016 in the UGC net paper where he asked that who among the following writer translated Homer and there were so many options out of which Alexander Pope was the right answer. So you must remember that Alexander Pope translated Homer's famous work Iliad and Odyssey. Now Iliad and Odyssey are like magnum opus and they are really really huge and it took him six years to translate them but then six years did not go in vain because these translations made him very famous and he became financially successful. Also due to his translation he became so famous among the literary circle in London that he became close friends with Joseph Edison and Richard Steele. He also formed a club known as Kriber's Club with Jonathan Swift, John Gay and John Erbithnot. There are so many other important literary movement going in the Enlightenment period and also following Romantics and Victorian. You can get a list of all the important literary movements that you should read if you are studying for UGC net on my website we cover each and every literary movement and the name of those group members in my online course so if you wish you can join my online course the details are given in the description box below. But coming back to what we were talking about on his translation of Homer we find one very very important critical statement given by Richard Bentley on his translation of Homer wearing he mocked Pope and said that it's a pretty poem Mr. Pope but you must not call it Homer and Pope was so offended by the statement and in the New Catholic Encyclopedia it has been written that no other poet in the literary history made the number of enemies that Pope made so Pope actually made so many enemies because he used to criticize all those people in his work people get so offended that you know they were envious of Pope they were jealous of Pope and they used to give critical statements about Pope's work. The next important work by Alexander Pope is his edition of Shakespeare yes guys we actually edited Shakespeare as well so he has done so much work on Homer onwards and now it's time for the great William Shakespeare so he has edited his work he has regularized Shakespeare's meter and also rewrote his words and while he was writing and editing Shakespeare's work he found that there were about 1560 lines which were so bad which were excessively bad and he thought that Shakespeare could have never written it so he excluded those lines from his edition of Shakespeare and this I heard a critic called Lewis Theobald Lewis Theobald wrote a pamphlet called Shakespeare Restored in which he actually criticized Alexander Pope's edition of Shakespeare and said that you know Pope has pointed out so many flaws in Shakespeare which are not so true and you know when he was listening to the criticism by Lewis Theobald and there was Richard Bentley criticizing Pope's work he got so angry that Alexander Pope decided that now he's going to write essays and pieces where he'll be criticizing all these writers who have mocked him and then started the journey where he wrote Epistle to Dr. Urbanot Epistle to Dr. Urbanot is a satire which he wrote for his very close friend called John Urbanot who was a physician John Urbanot is the same person with whom he started Scriber's Club so I've just mentioned about Scriber's Club which had members like Jonathan Swift John Bray then we had John Urbanot so these people were a member of Scriber's Club and John Urbanot was suffering from a disease and he was on his deathbed and at that time Alexander Pope wrote Epistle to Dr. Urbanot for his friend John Urbanot and in this work entire work it has been said that this work is directly autobiographical and it opens with a very very famous line called shut shut the door John dear John fatigued I said and this was a question which was asked so many times in the my in the net exam so you must remember the opening lines of Epistle to Dr. Urbanot the next important work by Alexander Pope is Essay on Man Essay on Man was written by Alexander Pope with a motive in mind and the motive was to vindicate the ways of gods to men and you can see how it connects to John Milton's Paradise Lost because Paradise Lost was also written with a similar motive this work also talks about the great chain of being which is a very very very important concept given by Alexander Pope and he says that how everything is connected to this great chain of being I talk about Essay on Man, Essay on Criticism, Rape of Long in detail in my online course because these are certain works which are very very important from net point of view there have been questions repeatedly asked from these works so we covered the summary and all the important points of these works in detail in my online audio course you can get the details on my website also you'll find a list of all the important writers that you should not skip if you're preparing for UGC net English literature we have a list of 700 writers divided into 10 modules which are very important from net point of view we cover all those writers in detail in my audio online course so you can get the details on my website you can have a list of all the writers and you can also find all the previous year papers with solved answers in my website so you can just start preparing for UGC nets in a revolutionary way before we end I would like to tell you about one very important work by Alexander Pope which is Danseard Danseard is a satire and it is divided into four books you must remember the number of books all these works are divided into which appears in UGC net exam several times because we find that you know these people keep on asking us about the certain work in in how many acts that work is or in how many books that work is so you must remember the number of books that work comprises so when you're talking about Danseard you must remember that this work Danseard was written by Alexander Pope in order to criticize hack writers hack writers for those of you who don't know I would like to tell you that these are the people who write for money so they would write about anything if they're getting money and they would flatter people who are very wealthy so that when they write a good piece about them they will give them money so Alexander Pope criticized all those people also one of the most famous criticism that he gave in this work was on Collie Gibber Collie Gibber was another critic who criticized Pope's work and Pope got so angry that he made him a hero of Danseard and in this work Danseard he says that Collie Gibber is the king of dullness so Collie Gibber according to Pope is the person who is bringing dullness into the world who is bringing darkness into the world we have references of coming from greek mythology heads we have lithe river which is actually the river of forgetfulness so all these references are coming here in this work which is very important so let's end this video but before that I would like to tell you that we are running a go net quiz on all the social media platforms the links are given in the description box below you can join me on the social media platform so that you can keep yourself updated about the questions that are asked in net exam also before you go do subscribe to my channel because I post videos every saturday and every sunday to help UGC net english aspirants to prepare for UGC net exam if you like this video do give it a big fan thumbs up and share it with other net aspirants till the time we meet next bye bye happy owning and keep loving the treacher