Pope s Complete

Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

Pope has presented a microcosm of the elite

society.

Presentation Made  by  The Teacher

18th-century

• The nation had recovered from the English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution, and the regained sense of political stability led to a resurgence of support for the arts. For this reason, many compared the period to the reign of Augustus in Rome, under whom both Virgil and Horace had found support for their work.

• The prevailing taste of the day was neoclassical, and 18th-century English writers tended to value poetry that was learned and allusive, setting less value on originality than the Romantics would in the next century.

Biographical Context

Pope himself was not part of the 'beau-monde'. He knew the families on which the poem is based but his own parents, though probably comfortably off, were not so rich or of the class one would have to be in to move in Belinda's circle. He associated with learned men and poets, and there can have been little common ground between the company he kept at Will's Coffee House and those who frequented Hampton Court.

Historical ContextSource: A Real-Life Incident

• The Rape of the Lock had its origins in an actual, if trivial, incident in polite society: in 1711, the twenty-one year old Robert, Lord Petre, at Bin field, had surreptitiously cut a lock of hair from the head of the beautiful Arabella Fermor, whom he had been courting. Arabella took offense, and a schism developed between her family and Petre's. John Caryll, a friend of both families and an old friend of Pope's, suggested that he work up a humorous poem about the episode which would demonstrate to both sides that the whole affair had been blown out of proportion and thus effect a reconciliation between them. Pope produced his poem, and it seemed to have achieved its purpose, though Petre never married Arabella.

1714 (letter)

• It became obvious over the course of time, however (especially after a revised and enlarged version of the poem, which existed at first only in manuscript copies, was published in 1714) that the poem, which Pope maintained "was intended only to divert a few young Ladies," was in fact something rather more substantial, and the Fermors again took offense--this time at Pope himself, who had to placate them with a letter, usually printed before the text, which explains that Arabella and Belinda, the heroine of the poem, are not identical.

Vanity and Idleness of 18th-century High society.

• The central theme of The Rape of the Lock is the fuss that high society makes over trifling matters, such as breaches of decorum.

In the poem, a feud of epic proportions erupts after the Baron steals a lock of Belinda’s hair/Human vanity

Weakness: Pride

• it functions at once as a satire on the trivialities of fashionable life, as a commentary on the distorted moral values of polite society

The world of the beaux and belles of The Rape of the Lock is a an artificial one, a trivial realm of calm and decorum sustained by the strict observance of rigorous rules, a microcosm in which very real and very powerful human emotions and passions have been ignored or sublimated. The narcissistic inhabitants of this world assume that they are something more than human, but Pope shows us vulnerable, how fragile, their pretended perfection and their isolation from reality makes them. The Rape of the Lock shatters the calm, the order, the balance, and the decorum of their artificial world. They are undone by what Pope identifies--here, as in An Essay on Man and "An Essay on Criticism"--as their most important weakness: Pride.

Conflicting Love

• The opposition between spiritual and secular love. The poem portrays men and women as more concerned with social status, material values, and physical beauty than the development of the spirit or of the character.

Obsession with Material Objects

• Morally, the Baron should have been thinking of more spiritual, less flighty things. Yet, in worshipping the lock, the Baron makes it a spiritual thing, which goes against the ideals of Christianity. Material things are not intended to be worshipped as sacred objects.

• Belinda, too prizes her hair above all else.

Values (disproportionate)

• The Rape of the Lock underscores the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all proportion, and the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues.

Introduction: The Mock-Epic

.   At the beginning of "The Rape of the Lock," Pope identifies the work as a “heroi-comical poem.” Today, the poem–is referred to as a mock-epic and sometimes as a mock-heroic.

Such a work uses the serious, elevated style of the classical epic poem–such as The Iliad or The Odyssey, by Homer–to poke fun at human follies. Thus, a mock-epic is a type of satire; it treats petty humans or insignificant occurrences as if they were extraordinary or heroic, like the great heroes and events of Homer's two great epics. In writing "The Rape of the Lock," Pope imitated the characteristics of Homer's epics, as well as later epics such as The Aeneid (Virgil), The Divine Comedy (Dante), and Paradise Lost (Milton). Many of these characteristics are listed below, under "Epic Conventions."

• Mock epic, a poem employing the lofty style and the conventions of epic poetry to describe a trivial or undignified series of events; thus a kind of satire that mocks its subject by treating it in an inappropriately grandiose manner, usually at some length. Mock epics incidentally make fun of the elaborate conventions of epic poetry, including invocations, battles, supernatural machinery, epic similes, and formulaic descriptions (e.g. of funeral rites or of warriors arming for combat). The outstanding examples in English are Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712–14) and The Dunciad (1728–43), while Boileau's Le Lutrin (1674–83) is an important French example

• Invocation to the Muse: In ancient Greece and Rome, poets had always requested “the muse” to fire them with creative genius when they began long narrative poems, or epics, about godlike heroes and villains.

In Greek mythology, there were nine muses, all sisters, who were believed to inspire poets, historians, flutists, dancers, singers, astronomers, philosophers, and other thinkers and artists. If one wanted to write a great poem, play a musical instrument with bravado, or develop a grand scientific or philosophical theory, he would ask for help from a muse. When a writer asked for help, he was said to be “invoking the muse.” The muse of epic poetry was named Calliope.    

• Division of the Poem Into Books or Cantos: The traditional epic is long, requiring several days of reading.

Dante's Divine Comedy, for example, contains 34 cantos. When printed, the work consists of a book about two inches thick .

Pope, of course, presents only five cantos containing a total of fewer than 600 lines. Such miniaturizing helps Pope demonstrate the smallness or pettiness of the behavior exhibited by the main characters in the poem.    

• Descriptions of Soldiers Preparing for Battle: In The Iliad, Homer describes in considerable detail the armor and weaponry of the great Achilles, as well as the battlefield trappings of other heroes.In The Rape of the Lock, Pope describes Belinda preparing herself with combs and pins–with "Puffs, Powders, Patches"–noting that "Now awful Beauty puts on all its Arms."   The passage is a mock version of the arming of the epic hero, her weaponry of cosmetics being ridiculed by the implicit comparison with the swords and shields of the epic hero.

• Descriptions of Heroic Deeds: While Homer describes the exploits of his heroes during the Trojan War, Pope describes the "exploits" of Belinda and the Baron during a card game called Ombre, which involves three players and a deck of 40 cards. 

• Account of a Great Sea Voyage: A convention of many classical epics is a sea voyage in which perils confront the hero at every turn.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) travels the seas between Troy and Greece, encountering many perils.

In The Aeneid, Aeneas travels the seas between Troy and Rome, also encountering perils.

In The Rape of the Lock, Belinda travels up the Thames in a boat. 

• Participation of Deities or Spirits in the Action:

In The Rape of the Lock--as in The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost--supernatural beings take part in the action.  Here, the spirits that watch over Belinda are meant to mimic the gods of the Greek and Roman traditions, who are sometimes benevolent and sometimes malicious, but always intimately involved in earthly events.

• Presentation of Scenes in the Underworld: Like supernatural beings in classical epics, the gnome Umbriel visits the Underworld in The Rape of the Lock

Parallels

• The rape of Helen became that of a lock of hair; • The gods became minute sylphs. • Æneas' voyage up the Tiber became Belinda's up the

Thames.• The long description of Achilles' shield became a brief

one of Belinda's petticoat. • There are sacrifices, prayers, laments, harangues,

feasts invocations, exclamations, are made for trivial reasons.

• Some of the speeches follow the framework of actual speeches in Homer and Virgil, thus adding parody to imitation.

Humour[epicidiom/socialobservation]

• The bringing together of the epic idiom and social observation provides the immediate humour of the poem

Harmony/Disharmony

• We are offered two kinds of pleasure: delight in the harmony and order offered by the artist's skill in representing the world, and laughter at the disharmony of the world represented.

Ironic contrast between its content and its structure

• It functions at once as a satire on the trivialities of fashionable life

• As a commentary on the distorted moral values of polite society.

• As an implicit indictment of human pride.• A revelation of the essentially trivial nature

of many of the aspects of human existence which we tend to hold very dear.

Startling juxtaposition of the petty (sub) and the grand (style)

• The arena of fashionable world is revealed as merely a mock-world.

• The characters are shown passing their lives with Lilliputian absurdity.

• We are shown the prisoners of the material world.

Grand Language

• Pope suggests that they are taking a trivial incident too seriously, displaying an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Throughout the poem Pope continues to make this point through his use of the mock-epic style, which itself takes a trivial incident too seriously, and uses disproportionately grand language to describe an unworthy subject .

Verse Format

• The verse form in the poem is heroic couplet. Pope still stands uncontested master of the form.

Pope wrote The Rape of the Lock in heroic couplets. A heroic couplet is a unit of two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter. A line of verse in iambic pentameter consists of 10 syllables. The first syllable is unaccented, the second accented, the third unaccented, the fourth accented, and so on. The entire poem consists of one heroic couplet followed by another, as demonstrated by the first four lines of the poem:  What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,  What mighty contests rise from trivial things,.......................[First Couplet: springs and things rhyme]  I sing–This verse to CARYL, Muse! is due:  This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view............................[Second Couplet: due and view rhyme] Each of the lines has 10 syllables in a succession of accented and unaccented pairs (iambic pentameter), as follows: 

Figures of Speech

• The main figure of speech in The Rape of the Lock is hyperbole. Pope uses it throughout the poem to exaggerate the ordinary and the commonplace, making them extraordinary and spectacular. In so doing, paradoxically, he makes them seem as they really are, small and petty. Examples of hyperbole include the following: 

Sol through white Curtains shot a tim'rous Ray,  And ope'd those Eyes that must eclipse the Day.  ...Hyberbole: Belinda's eyes are so bright that they outshine a ray of sunlight   This Nymph, to the Destruction of Mankind,  Nourish'd two Locks which graceful hung behind  ...Hyperbole: Belinda is so beautiful--and her wondrous locks so inviting--that she can bring mankind to ruin with desire.  

• Examples of Other Figures of Speech in the Poem • Personification

Love in these Labyrinths his Slaves detains    Alliteration Where Wigs with Wigs, with Sword-knots Sword-knots strive,  Beaux banish Beaux, and Coaches Coaches drive. 

Style

• The finesse and delicacy of ‘beau-monde’ manners is matched by Pope's style, and the good humour, wit, and charm which characterizes Pope's manner.

Hampton Court Palace:decorum

• The calm, the order, the balance, and the decorum of their artificial world is shattered.

• The rape of Belinda's lock grievously upsets the decorum of Hampton Court, but Pope ends the ludicrous battle by metamorphosing the ravished lock into constellation, by it become a part of the very cosmic order itself, the army of unalterable law.

Hampton Court Palace:paradox

• Introducing Hampton Court Palace, he describes it as the place where Queen Anne "dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.”

But one does not "take" tea in the same way one takes counsel ,the poet wants to show the royal residence as a place that houses both serious matters of state and frivolous social occasions. The reader is asked to contemplate that paradox and to reflect on the relative value and importance of these two different registers of activity.

Narcissism

• The ironic transposition of ‘cosmic powers’ in 'Cosmetic Pow’rs' indicates the excessive value she attributes to her make-up, and bowing to her own image shows her devotion to her religion of narcissism.

• The narcissistic inhabitants of this world assume that they are something more than human, but Pope shows us vulnerable, how fragile, their pretended perfection and their isolation from reality makes them.

Vulnerability of Belinda

• Behind the beauty created at the make-up table it is not just to her pride which the satirist mocks but also her vulnerability which Pope satirizes.

• This praise is certainly in some sense ironical, reflecting negatively on a system of public values in which external characteristics rank higher than moral or intellectual ones.

Feminist Reading

Belinda is treated as an actual victim of a violent crime when an unthinking suitor cuts off her hair.

Feminist Reading

The lack of women's opportunities in a patriarchal society.

Feminist Reading

The commoditization of women.

Feminist Reading

Pope examines the oppressed position of women. Infringement on a woman's personal space, her person and her pride by an aggressive male (the Baron) are certainly problems not to be taken lightly.

In today's society, these things translate to sexual harassment.

Feminist Reading

The place of woman is shaped by social and economic forces.

Feminist Reading

Belinda's strength is her physical appearance. Her marriage will not ultimately depend on her intelligence, or her personality, as women were not valued as objects of individuality but as beautiful objects to possess.

Feminist Reading

Never is the woman presented as rational, instead she is treated as if she is having a fit at all times and is full of nothing but flight and fancy.If Belinda has all the typical female foibles, Pope wants us to recognize that it is partly because she has been educated and trained to act in this way. The society as a whole is as much to blame as she is. Nor are men exempt from this judgment.

Feminist Reading

Her beauty is a threat in that it empowers Belinda and means he may have to compete with other men for her affection. The idea of a woman holding power of any sort over a man attacks the male ego.

Economic forces are at work

• Men marry to remain afloat financially. Marriage could mean acquisition of property and property The institution of marriage was used for Social-climbing . They play games of Evasion.

Economic forces are at work

• These women who value above all the prospect marrying to advantage, they learn at an early age how to promote themselves and manipulate their suitors without compromising themselves.

• Values were falling in the early eighteenth century. Woman's "joy in gilded Chariots" indicates an obsession with pomp and superficial splendor, while "love of Ombre," a fashionable card game, suggests frivolity.

What is Marxism ?

Karl Marx (1818-1893)

German PhilosopherSocial Critic

Marxism: Social Theory of Marx is called Marxism.

Focus on World Class StructureAristocracy Bourgeoisie Proletariat

Nobles, Kings, Feudal lords,

Self-motivated acquisition.

The Exploited Ones.

Extraordinary power, Extraordinary privileges.

Accumulated wealth and influence.

Sell their bodies.Sell their labor.

Ownership of land. Controlled: Factories, Businesses, Highly profitable enterprises

Taught to devalue themselves.

Proprietorship over the bodies.

Exploited labor of others. Generate wealth for the elite and bourgeoisie

• Do class based ideologies effect human life?

On Human life

Class Based Ideologies

Concrete effects Diffuse Effects

Marxist Reading

• This text addresses class issues explicitly portraying the living conditions of the wealthy.

• What is ignored is as important as what is said explicitly. Do you agree?

Marxist Reading

Do Material realities help to determine the quality of our lives and the opportunities available to us?

Why there are such gross inequalities?

Marxist Reading; Pakistan.

• After reading “The Rape of the Lock”, are you motivated to improve the material conditions of the poor?

• In Pakistan ,a small number of people possess too much wealth. Too many individuals are hungry ,are in need of health care and education and are unemployed or underpaid for the hard work that they perform.

We being scholars should ask how and why oppressive social systems operate and should explore avenues for changing them.

Marxist Reading; Pakistan.

• Hegemony

• Status quo• Stratification of power• Economic Resources.

Status Quo seems natural & unchallengeable.

Hegemony

• Thus the aristocracy and later the bourgeoisie have acquired the power to exploit the labor of the proletariat , they also assert that they have the right, even the duty, to do so.

• Understand the dynamics of economic oppression.

• The working class should Redefine their worldview and demand s share of world’s wealth.

Marxist Reading

• Do we still judge the people on the basis of how current and stylish their clothes are?

• Belinda and also the people belonging to her class attribute intrinsic value to commodities without recognizing the labor that produced them. In fact, they value commodities more highly than human beings.

Marxist Reading ;Result.

• Hegemonic forces are still resilient.

• Proletarian struggle toward self awareness is unsuccessful.

• Effective social mobilization is unsuccessful.

Why-Marxist and Material Textual Analysis.

• Helps to explore a wide range of social issues.

• Helps to explore a wide range of social forces inside and outside the boundaries of text.

• Sense of political urgency compels us to do so.

• Sense of economic urgency compels us to do so.

Unlike Formalist Analysis

Focused

Sociological power of the text Political power of the text

Why Baron steels Belinda’s lock?

Belinda wins the card game and offends the Baron's pride. Out to take his revenge, to reclaim his dignity and steal her lock.

Pope's message

• It is a plea for maturity and good sense, for virtue and care of the soul.

• See their lives in a wider context he hopes to persuade them to adopt a more rational sense of proportion.

Pope's message

• Pope suggests that attention to spiritual matters, the strengthening of character, and the development or value of inner beauty are matters to which society does not properly attend.

• By laughing at the mock-epic style they will have to admit that they are laughing at themselves, and Pope hopes this will inculcate a spirit of good humor and reconciliation.

Criticism on Pope

William Bowles, the editor of Pope's Works, argued that true poetry was marked by a poetical subject, such as the beauty of nature, whereas writing focused on the ordinary activities of men and women in polite society was inevitably as artificial as its subject matter. Over the next few years an increasing number of poets and critics sniped at Pope as a mere versifier rather than a true poet.

Defense

• The strongest defense of Pope came from Byron.

If there were a general wreck of English literature, he wrote to his publisher, the English would rush to save Shakespeare and Milton, but the rest of the world would save Pope's work first, because Pope was 'the moral poet of all civilization'.

Defense

• Byron was ready to defend Pope against all comers, and pretty much on any grounds -- as a poet of imagination and invention, as well as the poet of good sense -- but in particular he insisted that what others called Pope's artificiality was in truth his 'faultlessness'.

• The underlying claim in Byron's defense of Pope is that the moral authority of the verse is implicit in, bound up with, its executive efficiency. I want to begin by exploring Byron's sense that a well-made couplet is a moral act.

Defense

James Russell Lowell declared, “For wit, fancy, invention, and keeping, it has never been surpassed.”

Defense

Leslie Stephen observed that Pope's poem “is allowed, even by his bitterest critics, to be a masterpiece of delicate fancy.”

Defense

• Samuel Johnson pronounced it “the most attractive of ludicrous compositions,” in which “New things are made familiar and familiar things are made new.”

Pope's literary art

• The poem reveals that pope has understanding of human passion, the appreciation of beauty, has wonderful power over words.

• The finesse and delicacy of ‘beau-monde’ manners is matched by Pope's style, the good humor, wit, fine judgments, and carefully aimed criticisms represent an expression of the same ideals pursued by the Baron and other courtly men of the age.