Alexander Pope
The Rape of the Lock
British
Age of Reason
Alexander Pope was born in London, England, in the same year that William of Orange, a Protestant, replaced James II, a Roman Catholic, on the English throne. As a Catholic, Pope was denied most civil rights under the Protestant monarchy. He was unable to attend university, receive patronage, or hold any public office. As a young child, he was also afflicted with a deforming physical malady, tuberculosis of the bone, which constricted his spine, so he was constantly ridiculed for his small stature and disability. These challenges would inform Pope’s work for all of his life; he often uses satire to describe the advantages and vanities of the aristocracy. In spite of the limitations of his education and his struggle with disabilities, however, Pope became one of the best-known English writers in the Age of Reason.
Pope is one of the most quoted writers in the English language, second only to William Shakespeare. In An Essay on Criticism, we find, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” His An Essay on Man addresses many of the social and political debates of his day concerning what it means to be a human being and who has authority in political and theological issues. In these essay poems, as well as his other works, Pope uses the heroic couplet, a poetic device used by Chaucer and many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poets, that involves a series of two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. Pope’s famous translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey also contain these couplets:
Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!
Homer, Iliad
The Rape of the Lock (1717)
Pope demonstrates his knowledge of the traditional epics through many allusions to Homer’s work and John Milton’s Paradise Lost in his mock epic, The Rape of the Lock. A mock epic satirizes the traditional epic by utilizing the grand conventions of epic-elevated language, deus ex machina (“god from a machine,” divine or supernatural intervention), and brave warriors in battle for a trivial subject. His brilliant satire also comments on foolish courtship rituals, such as a woman giving a lock of her hair to an admirer, that characterize the vanities of the aristocracy.
Discussion Questions:
- How does Belinda demonstrate the fanciful female in the poem?
- How and why does Belinda forget Ariel’s warnings of “some dread event”?
- Choose two or more epic allusions from traditional epics and discuss the way in which Pope parodies the epic form.
- Discuss the card game “ombre” as an epic battle.
Written by Karen Dodson