The
Rape of the Lock - A mock-epic poem/ Heroic-comical poem
Heroic or Epic poems, according
to Maynard Meck, are poems like the Odyssey, the Aeneid, andParadise
Lost dealing with man in his exalted aspects. Their action is
weighty, their personages are dignified and their style is elevated.
The Iliad, for example, deals
with the tough and prolonged battle between the Greek and the Trojan Heroes,
while the Odyssey describes the adventures of Odysseus, one of the Greek kings
in the war of Troy. Similarly, Virgil’s Aeneid deals with the adventures
of Aeneas and ends with the hero’s finding his divinely ordained destiny as the
founder of the Roman Empire. Milton Paradise Lost represents the
fall of the rebellious angles from Paradise and justifies the ways of
God to man. In all the epics, gods and daemons, take active part in human
affairs and guide the destiny of their chosen participants. The mock-epic
is a poetic form which uses the epic structure but on a miniature scale and has
a subject that is mean and trivial. The purpose of the mock-epic or mock-heroic
poem is satirical. The writer makes the subject look ridiculous by placing it
in a framework entirely inappropriate to its importance. Pope’s description of
the Rape of the Lock as a mock-heroic poem misled some readers into thinking
that the comic attack was intended against heroic-poetry. In fact, a
mock-heroic poem is not a satire on poetry itself, but the target of the attack
may be a person or persons, an institution or institutions or the whole
society. The subject of such a poem is trivial or unimportant, but the
treatment of the subject is heroic or epic and such exaggeration of the trivial
naturally arouses laughter. The pleasure of the poem, as Ian Jack points out,
ensues from “comparing small men to giants and making pygmies of them in the
process”. A mock-epic parodies the epic in the sense of whichDr. Johnson
described parody as “a kind of writing in which the word of an author or his
thoughts are taken and by a light change are adapted to some new purpose.”
Pope was fully conscious of his intentions to make The Rape of the Lock a
mock-epic poem is evident from the title he has given it. Homer’s Iliad which
describes the events arising out of Helen’s elopement with a Trojan prince,
Paris and the subsequent war between the Greeks and the Trojans can be
appropriately described as a poem dealing with the “Rape of Helen”. That
is how the Greeks took this whole episode. The title of Pope’s poem, The Rape
of the Lock is thus a parody of the Iliad in this sense; for in this poem, the
mighty contest ensues from the rape or assault on the lock of
Belinda’s hair. The Rape of the Lock parodies the serious epics not
only in it title but also in the overall structure. The poem is divided into
five cantos like the five acts of a drama. At the beginning, there is a statement
of purpose and invocation to the Muse as in a serious epic. Homer, for
example, begins his Iliad thus: chilles’ wrath to Greece the direful
spring Of woes unnumbered heavenly goddess sing Virgil declares in Aenied
that “Of arms and man I sing” Milton starts his epic “Of man’s first
disobedience to and to justify the ways of God to man” Pope imitate these
conventions when he declares in his poem.
What dire offence from am’rous
causes springs what mighty contests arise from trivial
things I sing – this verse to Caryll Muse!
is due This ev’n
Belinda may vouchsafe to
view:
Slight is the subject, but not so
the
praise
If she inspire, and he approve my
lays.
It is through these words that we
understand that the beginning is like that of most epics. Subsequent events of
the poem parody the epic structure in the similar way. The opening invocation,
the description of the heroine’s toilet, the journey to Hampton
Court , the game of ombre magnified into a pitched battle all lead
up to the moment when the peer produces the fatal pair of scissors, but the action of
the mortals was not enough. Pope knew that in true epics the affairs of men
were aided or thwarted by the Heavenly Powers. He, therefore, added the bodies
of the supernatural beings – sylphs, gnomes, nymphs and salamanders –
as agents in the story. The gods of the epic are heroic beings, but
pope’s deities are tiny. Pope describes the diminutive gods of the
poem as “the light militia of the lower sky”.
Belinda screams like the Homeric poems and dashed like the characters of the
great epics, but she is a mere slip of a girl. This is the ironic contrast. We
find a battle drawn to combat like the Greek warriors. But
it is only a game of cards on a dressing table. We find a supernatural being
who threatens his inferiors with torture. But it is a Sylph, not Jove. The poem
contains parodies of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Spenser and Milton as
well as reminiscences of Catallus, Ovid and the Bible. There are several
instances of Burlesque-treatment. There is Belinda’s voyage to Hampton
Court which suggests the voyage of Aeneas up to the Tiber in
Virgil. There is a coffee party which is a parody of the meals frequency
described in Homer. The combat at the end recalls the fighting which is found
anywhere in the ancient epics. The Cave of Spleen is a
parody of an allegorical picture, examples of which may be found in poets like
Spenser. Just before the cutting of the lock, when Ariel searches out the close
recess of the virgin’s thoughts. There he finds an earthly lover lurking in her
heart, and Pope tells us that Ariel retires with a sigh, resigned to fate. This
situation echoes the moment in Paradise Lost when after the fall of Adam
and Eve, the Angles of God retire mute and sad to heaven. The angles could have
protected Adam and Even against Satan, but man’s own free choice of will they
are as helpless as Ariel and his comrades are in the face of Belinda’s free
choice of earthly lover. An outstanding mock-heroic in the poem is the
comparison between arming of an epic hero and Belinda’s dressing herself and
using cosmetics in order to kill. Pope describes a society-lady in terms that
would suit the arming of a warrior like Achilles. The Rape of the Lock is a
poem ridiculing the fashionable world of Pope’s day. But there are several
occasions when we feel that the epic world of homer and Virgil has in this poem
been scaled down, wittily and affectionately, to admit the
coffee-table and the fashionable lady’s bed-chamber.
Supernatural Machinery: In all
epics, god and daemons, whether pagan or Christian, participate in the action side
by side with the human agents. In an epic poem, as Le Bossu had emphasized,
“the machine crowns the whole work” Pope, therefore, gives a mock dignity to
theaction of the Rape of the Lock by the use of machinery of sylphs and
gnomes. Taken from the Rosicrucian cult, which Bayle had described as the “sect
of mountebanks”, the sylphs and gnomes reduce the divine and demonic agents of
an epic poem to their diminutive status. Unlike the deities of the epics,
who act guardian agents of the epic heroes, Belinda’s guardian sylph, Ariel is
an ineffectual/airy being who deserts her at the most critical moment. The
supernatural machinery of the poem thus provides a gentle mockery of the epic
deities and increases the charm of the poem as a mock-heroic.
The Epic Style: Within this
framework, The Rape of the Lock contains many allusions to Homer, Virgil,
Milton and Shakespeare. Ariel’s description of the metamorphosis of a
prudish woman into a sylph –
Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive
And love of Ombre, after death
survive –
is a direct parody of Aeneid in
Dryden’s translation;
The love of horses which they
had, alive,
And care of chariots, after death
survive.
Though the subject-matter of the
Rape of the Lock is trivial and ridiculous, the style, diction and
versification are rarely so. The diction is exalted throughout, the
heroic-couplets are carefully polished and chiseled and the classical device of
periphrasis is frequently resorted to. The very opening line of The Rape of the
Lock – What dire/my lays could very well open a serious epic. At the
end of Canto II, one notices a similar elevation of style:
What time would spare, from steel
receives it dates And moments like men submit to fate!
Steel cou’d the labour of the
gods destroy,
And strike to dust the’ imperial
tow’rs of Troy
The rhetoric style is the same
that occurs in epic poetry. The Mock-heroic effect is produced by
the context which emphasizes that the invincible “steel” referred to here
is the steel of the pair of scissors with which the Baron cuts off
Belinda’s lock.
But when to mischief mortals bend
their will,
How soon they find fit
instruments of ill!
Just ‘hen, Clarissa drew with
tempting grace
A two-edged weapon from her
shining case.
The use of the periphrases –
“two-edged weapon”, “glittering Forfex” and the fatal engine for a tiny pair of
scissors.
Collateral of the Great with the
Little: A mock-epic or mock-heroic in the Augustan sense of the term in itself
is an example of the collation of the great with the little. In the Rape of the
Lock, Pope frequently juxtaposes the heroic with the trivial to produce the
mock-epic effect. The very opening couplet juxtaposes “Mighty contest” with
trivial things”. Elsewhere, Pope achieves this effect by reducing the
great to the level of the trivial.
Whether the nymph shall break
Diana’s law,
Or some frail China jar
receive a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or hew
brocade,
Forget her prayers, or miss a
masquerade,
Or lose her heart, or a necklace,
at a ball;
Or whether Heaven has doom’d that
Shock must fall.
In these three couplets, chastity
is equated with ‘frail China jar’ honor with new brocade, rayer with
a masquerade, heart
with a
necklace. The effect of this collation is highly amusing and startling. The
confusion of values which informs Belinda’s world could not have been presented
in a way better than this juxtaposing of the great with the little.
Conclusion: All these devices
make The Rape of the Lock a highly subtle and complex mock-epic. Dryden’s Mac
Flecknoe appears rather simple and straightforward when compared with Pope’s
poem. In the Rape of the Lock, however, satire is mixed with genuine charm which
surrounds Belinda, Is central figure. Pope does not deny the charm and glamour
and the artificial world she presides over. In her barge over Thames, she
is genuinely fascinated fascinating and remains so in the rest of the poem. It
is only when one notices that this brilliance and gaiety are at the expense of
something much more important that they appear to be trivial and hollow.
Belinda’s description in the second Canto is both a genuine admiration for her
beauty and charm and a mild criticism of her pride and coquetry.
On her white breast a sparking
cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and
infidels adore.
Favors to none, to all she smiles
extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once
offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the
gazers strike,
And like the sun, they shine on
all alike.
The Rape of the Lock is a nearly
perfect example of its genre, the genre of the mock-epic not only because it
parodies the epic conventions and devices throughout, but also because it
provides a highly amusing drama of its own rights. The greatness of the poem is
due to Pope’s genius as well as to the care and pains he took in a different
form. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity is as
nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is made great
and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the
triumph of insignificance of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the
mock-heroic
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