The Rape of The lock : Analysis, theme and kind

The Rape of The Lock : Analysis , theme and kind


The Rape of the Lock could be a clowlike indictment of the vanities and idleness of 18th-century elite. Basing his literary work on a true incident among families of his acquaintance, Pope meant his verses to cool down hot tempers and to encourage his friends to taunt their own folly.
The literary work is probably the foremost outstanding example within the West Germanic language of the genre of mock-epic. The epic had long been thought-about one in every of the foremost serious of literary forms; it had been applied, within the classical amount, to the lofty subject material of affection and war, and, additional recently, by Milton, to the intricacies of the Christian religion. The strategy of Pope’s mock-epic isn't to mock the shape itself, however to mock his society in its terribly failure to rise to epic standards, exposing its pettiness by casting it against the grandeur of the normal epic subjects and also the bravery and courageousness of epic heroes: Pope’s impersonation treatment within the Rape of the Lock underscores the meaninglessness of a society during which values have lost all proportion, and also the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that got to be accorded to really vital problems. The society on show during this literary work is one that fails to differentiate between things that matter and things that don't. The {poem|verse kind|literary composition|literary work} mocks the boys it portrays by showing them as unworthy a form that suited a additional heroic culture. therefore the mock-epic resembles the epic in this its central issues area unit serious and infrequently ethical, however the very fact that the approach should currently be satiric instead of earnest is symptomatic however way the culture has fallen.
Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is complex and complete. The Rape of the Lock could be a literary work during which each part of the up to date scene conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical view, and also the items area unit shaped beside a cleverness and experience that creates the literary work shocking and pleasant. Pope’s transformations area unit various, striking, and loaded with ethical implications. the good battles of epic become bouts of gambling and coquettish tiffs. The great, if capricious, Greek and Roman gods area unit reborn into a comparatively dedifferentiated army of primarily ineffectual sprites. Cosmetics, clothing, and jewellery substitute for armor and weapons, and also the rituals of spiritual sacrifice area unit transplanted to the room and also the altar of affection.
The literary work of The Rape of the Lock is that the heroic couplet; Pope still reigns because the uncontested master of the shape. The couplet consists of rhymed pairs of iambic verse line lines (lines of 10 syllables every, alternating stressed and unaccented syllables). Pope’s couplets don't fall under strict iambs, however, flowering instead with an upscale singsong variation that keeps the extremely regular meter from turning into serious or tedious. Pope distributes his sentences, with their decisively parallel descriptive linguistics, across the lines and half-lines of the literary work in an exceedingly approach that enhances the considered quality of his ideas. Moreover, the inherent balance of the couplet kind is strikingly well matched to a theme matter that pulls on comparisons and contrasts: the shape invitations configurations during which 2 ideas or circumstances area unit balanced, measured, or compared against each other. it's therefore excellent for the appraising, moralisation premise of the literary work, significantly within the hands of this sensible writer.

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