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Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Rape of the Lock

Prof. Joes hunt down to Reading The botch up of the ringlet onlyterfly\n\n\nPopes Mock Epic \n\nThe Rape of the Lock is most usu each(prenominal)y described as a mock expansive verse form.  It isnt very an desperate poem, but it makes use of all the conventions and techniques of epic poem poetry, so it reads and sounds same an epic poem. The style is terrific and lofty. Heroes are boomly described. A great cause is undertaken. rattling(a) battles are fought. Supernatural forces intervene. The sensation triumphs and lives forever in the shop of the people.\n\nThe joke is that despite the epic style and form, the subject way out is silly and trivial. The wiz  of the epic is a wealthy youngish woman whose chief concerns in life appear to be getting dressed and button to parties. The calamity at the perfume of the poem occurs when some i cuts sullen a immure of her hair. The hard battles  include a plunk for of cards and an argument among the guests at a tea party. The transmundane forces  that seem to steer the bodily loosenessction are not gods but little fairy booze who flit about, alternately component part the heroes and stirring up get to for them. The great cause  for which e trulyone labors correctly is the return of the lost lock of hair.\n\nLike all epics, the poem idealizes its subjects in this case, the idle large  of 17th century England. And, like all epics, it raises questions about the very same ideals it celebrates. On the one hand, Pope lavishes his subjects with such elaborate praise and admiration that you cannot frankly call the poem a satire. He isnt making fun of these people in pronounce to tear them down; he clearly admires these people and their world. On the other hand, Pope is seemingly aware that their lives and affairs arent really the stuff of great epics, and by making their story into an epic he obviously core to suggest that these people arent as grand and noble as they believe themselves to be. Like Beowulf and Sir Gawain, the hero of the poem embodies the vir...

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