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    Notes On Rape of The Lock

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    Kingshuk Mondal
    This document provides an overview and analysis of Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock". It discusses Pope's mastery of the heroic couplet form and how he helped professionalize poetry. It then summarizes the plot of "The Rape of the Lock" and analyzes some of Pope's poetic techniques, such as zeugma. The document places the poem in the context of 18th century Augustan literature and its neoclassical influences from Roman and Greek classics.

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    Notes On Rape of The Lock

    Uploaded by

    Kingshuk Mondal
    348 views5 pages
    This document provides an overview and analysis of Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock". It discusses Pope's mastery of the heroic couplet form and how he helped professionalize poetry. It then summarizes the plot of "The Rape of the Lock" and analyzes some of Pope's poetic techniques, such as zeugma. The document places the poem in the context of 18th century Augustan literature and its neoclassical influences from Roman and Greek classics.

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    Rape of the Lock notes

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    Notes on Rape of the Lock

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    This document provides an overview and analysis of Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock". It discusses Pope's mastery of the heroic couplet form and how he helped professionalize poetry. It then summarizes the plot of "The Rape of the Lock" and analyzes some of Pope's poetic techniques, such as zeugma. The document places the poem in the context of 18th century Augustan literature and its neoclassical influences from Roman and Greek classics.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    348 views5 pages

    Notes On Rape of The Lock

    Uploaded by

    Kingshuk Mondal
    This document provides an overview and analysis of Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock". It discusses Pope's mastery of the heroic couplet form and how he helped professionalize poetry. It then summarizes the plot of "The Rape of the Lock" and analyzes some of Pope's poetic techniques, such as zeugma. The document places the poem in the context of 18th century Augustan literature and its neoclassical influences from Roman and Greek classics.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 5

    he lesson includes both a quiz and a journal writing assignment to be submitted on

    the interactive course site at SUNY Learning Network.

    Journal "the most


    attractive of
    Write for an hour (or more if you have time). Summarize the readings or make notes ludicrous
    you will find useful on the final essay. Some other journaling ideas for today include: compositions"--
    Samuel Johnson
    What is your favorite couplet in "The Rape of the Lock"? What makes (Damrosch 2938
    it good?

    The classical allusions in "The Rape of the Lock" make the poem
    difficult for readers unfamiliar with the classics. Do you think that
    Pope was smart to try to associate himself with Homer, Virgil and
    Horace? Or was he mistaken that the fame of these writers would last
    forever? What does the poem really tell us about using literary
    models? Are any of the selections we have read in this course good See General
    practical models for writers today? instructions on
    Journaling for this
    How do you like 18th century British fashion? Why do think that such course. For a sampl
    journal, see Dr. G's
    styles were fashionable?
    2007 Brit Lit 1
    Journal.

    NOTES AND COMMENTARY


    Adapted by Dr. G from David Damrosch, et al.,
    Teaching British Literature (New York: Longman, 2003)

    Alexander Pope (1688-1744) has been


    regarded as the great poet of the 18th
    century, but the all-time master of
    the heroic couplet, or paired lines of
    rhymed iambic pentameter. He wrote
    almost everything in this form: epics,
    epistles, satires, poems of celebration,
    philosophical poems. He claimed to have
    had the rhythm all of his life, As yet a
    child, nor yet a fool to fame, / I lisped in
    numbers, for the numbers came
    ("Epistle to Arbuthnot " ll. 12829).
    Remarkable in Pope's couplets is the
    range of expression--the nuance, pause,
    and emphasis, varying the metrically
    monotonous beat da DA da DA da DA da DA da DA.

    If you try writing some heroic couplets, there should come a point after lots
    of practice where the precise, rhythmic, alien form suddenly crosses over
    into natural speech patterns (one of the forms virtues, according to 18th
    century poets). Or are the natural speech patterns of our age captured in rap
    or limerick or some other popular form?

    Pope helped to professionalize the poet as he pulled away from the system
    of private patronage and moved into the public world of commercial
    booksellers and publishing. He also helped to privatize poetry, to authorize
    the writing of self along with traditional public subjects such as monarchs,
    national events, and British character types. His epistles and satires
    emphasize the occasional and the trivial.

    Following the lead of John Dryden (the great Restoration poet and critic for
    whom our town is named), he wrote at length about literary matters: what
    literature does, how it works, who is great and who isn't. His "Essay on
    Criticism" is like Sidney's "Defense of Poetry," a classic statement on
    literature, but it is more practical in its advice. For example, one of famous
    passages describes (and illustrates as it describes) how sound should echo
    meaning:
    But most by Numbers judge a Poet's Song,
    And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;
    In the bright Muse tho' thousand Charms conspire,
    Her Voice is all these tuneful Fools admire,
    Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear,
    Not mend their Minds; as some to Church repair,
    Not for the Doctrine, but the Musick there.
    These Equal Syllables alone require,
    Tho' oft the Ear the open Vowels tire,
    While Expletives their feeble Aid do join,
    And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line,
    While they ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
    With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes.
    Where-e'er you find the cooling Western Breeze,
    In the next Line, it whispers thro' the Trees;
    If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep,
    The Reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with Sleep.
    Then, at the last, and only Couplet fraught
    With some unmeaning Thing they call a Thought,
    A needless Alexandrine ends the Song,
    That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.
    Leave such to tune their own dull Rhimes, and know
    What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
    And praise the Easie Vigor of a Line,
    Where Denham's Strength, and Waller's Sweetness join.
    True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
    As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance,
    'Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,
    The Sound must seem an Echo to the Sense.
    Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
    And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
    But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
    The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
    When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
    The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
    Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
    Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
    Hear how Timotheus' vary'd Lays surprize,
    And bid Alternate Passions fall and rise!
    While, at each Change, the Son of Lybian Jove
    Now burns with Glory, and then melts with Love;
    Now his fierce Eyes with sparkling Fury glow;
    Now Sighs steal out, and Tears begin to flow:
    Persians and Greeks like Turns of Nature found,
    And the World's Victor stood subdu'd by Sound!

    With his criticism, Pope teaches us to read his poetry. He shows us that the
    art of writing heroic couplets is not as effortless as it should seem: True
    ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who
    have learned to dance (ll. 36263).

    The Augustan Age


    Pope's era is known as the Augustan Age in that the chief literary figures
    modeled their works on the Roman writers of the time of the first
    emperor Augustus (63 BCE - 14 CE). Virgil, Horace, Ovid and other
    imperial worthies were taught in British grammar schools, and the lessons
    stuck in professional adult writing. Milton in Paradise Lost had imitated
    Virgil, and Dryden had translated Virgil, with a result that his poetry
    became Virgilian. There is a certain irony or perhaps arrogance in this
    admiration of the classics, if we think back to the Roman conquest of
    Britain in the classical period with which our course began (lesson 1).

    After spending years translating Homer into heroic couplets, Pope's could
    see everything in his life in terms of the Trojan War. His mocking in the
    Rape draws constantly on the juxtaposition of the trivial matter and the
    heroic manner, as his introduction to the poem suggests. Everything in the
    Rape has a model in Homer or Virgil or Milton. An example in our
    textbook allows us to compare Sarpedons speech from Homer's Iliad to
    Clarissas speech inserted to open more clearly the MORAL of the poem.
    What we are seeing in this kind of neo-classicism is the Age of Books at its
    peak, with books becoming so influential that one's work is focused on
    them and one's life experience is dominated by literary experience. Reading
    and writing have become a way of life.

    The Rape of the Lock


    English critic William Hazlitt once
    commented about the Rape: It is like
    looking through a microscope, where
    every thing assumes a new character and
    a new consequence, where things are
    seen in their minutest circumstances and
    slightest shades of difference; where the
    little becomes gigantic, the deformed
    beautiful, and the beautiful deformed
    (Lectures on the English Poets[London,
    1818], 4:142). Making connections with
    our anthology's selections from
    Boyles Meditations and
    Hookes Micrographia can show how the
    new science offered new opportunities
    for poetic experiment and imagery. The
    microscope and the telescope (the latter
    makes an actual appearance within the poem as Galileos eyes [5.138])
    supply images through which to analyze the exaggeration and
    miniaturization of the poem, to see how the mock transforms in
    paradoxical ways the epic. If looks could kill.

    Popes poetic technique is dazzling here. Consider the rich connections of


    zeugma: Or stain her honor, or her new brocade (2.107); Dost
    sometimes counsel takeand sometimes tea (3.8). And through the
    interpretive prisms of metonymy: Belindas dressing table, on which India
    and Arabia are reduced (1.12936), or Japan and China on the board
    (3.10512), the poem at once celebrating and satirizing the symbols of
    imperialism. Visit the dark corners of the mind in the Cave of Spleen,
    where boundaries of gender and identity blur: A pipkin there like Homers
    tripod walks; / Here sighs a jar, and there a goose pie talks; / Men prove
    with child, as powrful fancy works, / And maids turned bottles, call aloud
    for corks [4.5154]). And what do you think Belinda means when she
    cries out, Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize /Hairs less in sight, or
    any hairs but these! (4.17576)? Pope's nemesis John Dennis pretended to
    be incensed at the implicit obscenity here; so don't worry that your
    interpretations read too much into the poem.

    And what the rape itself. The Latin word


    rapere means to carry away; the lock is
    literally stolen. But rape then as now had
    its violent sexual meaning; of what else is
    Belinda raped? How do the genderless
    or cross-genderingsylphs fit into the
    scenario? Why does an earthly lover
    lurking at her heart (3.144) become the
    crux of vulnerability? What, in this central
    interpretive issue, are the epic meanings
    and the mock-epic exaggerations?

    The final stanza recommends that Belinda


    cease to mourn her ravished hair; she should
    instead cheer up because the Muse is about to make her immortal. The
    story is about the rape of Belindas lock, but its more about the telling of
    the story. The ability to have a laugh defuses conflict.

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