The Rape Of The Lock

The Rape of the Lock is, by common consent, the finest example of mock epic poetry in the English language. It was initially written as an occasional poem concerning a feud between two land-owning, Catholic families, the Petres and the Fermors. The young Lord Petre had cut a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor, a fashionable young society lady, and both she and her family had taken offence. Pope had been told of the incident by his Catholic friend, John Caryll, who asked if he could write a poem to make a jest of the division between the two families and “laugh them together again.” The Rape of the Locke (with an 'e'), in 2 Cantos (334 lines), written in less than a fortnight in the autumn of 1711, and published on 20 May 1712, was the result.

The poem went through three main stages of composition. The Rape of the Lock (without an 'e'), in 5 Cantos (761 lines),
was not written till a year after the publication of the
two-canto version, and not published till two years later, on 2 March 1714. This was a more polished piece of work, nearly two-and-a-half times longer than the first version, and containing the major addition of the supernatural elements that Pope refers to in his prefatory letter to the poem as the “Machinery”. Then in 1717, in preparing the poem for the first edition of his Collected Works, Pope introduced “grave Clarissa's” speech (Canto V, 9-34), “to open more clearly the MORAL of the Poem,” as he tells us in a footnote. It is this last version, in 5 Cantos (794 lines) that we usually read today.

The Rape of the Lock is what Pope calls on the title page “An Heroi-Comical Poem” or a mock epic. Since the poem oscillates between comicality and mockery, both descriptions are helpful. A minor incident, in this case the cutting off of a young lady's side curl, is comically exalted and the social brouhaha and fuss associated with it is ridiculed by being cast in the framework of the epic structure. There is a conscious disparity between content and form: “Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise”, as Pope says in Canto 1, line 5. Pope deliberately turns the eighteenth-century concept of decorum — proper words in proper places — upside down. He takes a trivial subject matter and describes it in a grand style.


Epic Conventions

Because a mock-epic parodies a classical epic, it uses the same conventions, or formulas, as the classical epic--but usually in a humorous way. For example, a convention of many classical epics is a sea voyage in which perils confront the hero at every turn. In The Rape of the Lock, the sea voyage is Belinda's boat trip up the Thames River. Her guardian sylph, Ariel, sees "black omens" that foretell disasters for Belinda even though the waves flow smoothly and the winds blow gently. Will she stain her dress? Lose her honor or her necklace? Miss a masquerade? Forget her prayers? So frightful are the omens that Ariel summons 50 of his companion spirits to guard Belinda's petticoat, as well as the ringlets of her hair. Following are examples of the epic conventions that Pope parodies:

• Invocation of 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 [kuh LY uh pe]. In "The Rape of the Lock," Pope does not invoke a goddess; instead, he invokes his friend, John Caryll (spelled CARYL in the poem), who had asked Pope to write a literary work focusing on an event (the snipping of a lock of hair) that turned the members of two families--the Petres and the Fermors--into bitter enemies. Caryll thought that poking fun at the incident would reconcile the families by showing them how trivial the incident was.

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



• 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: 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.


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