The Rape of the Lock as a Mock Heroic or Mock Epic Poem

The Rape of the Lock as a Mock Heroic or Mock Epic Poem

The epic is a narrative verse form, of supposed divine inspiration, treating of a theme of nice and significant  importance for humans, the characters of the story being part human and partly divine, and the language and style in which the incidents are related being full of elevation and dignity.

If an extended narrative verse form ought to satisfy all the tests of heroic poetry, however if the topic that is widely known be of a trivial nature, like the cutting off a lock of a woman's hair, that is that the story that's connected in Pope's The Rape of the Lock, then such a poem is called a mock-epic poem. A mock-epic verse form is meant to be the inspiration of a Muse, the characters area unit part human and part divine, and the language is stilted and grandiose, but the subject is of a very frivolous and commonplace nature. Pope referred to as The Rape of the Lock a "heroi-comical poem", that is another name for a mock-epic. It belongs to the category of literature referred to as "burlesque". A burlesque could be a parody on an outsized scale, within which not one verse form, but a whole type of style of literature is parodied, the language and thought proper to a significant theme reproduced in setting forth one thing ridiculous or trivial.

Instead of grand passions and nice fights between heroes within which the immortals participate, we've got because the theme of The Rape of the Lock a petty amorous quarrel assisted by the spirits of the air. The epic portrays an age round the personality of a god or a semi-god, and its characters are heroes. The Rape of the Lock, on the other hand, gives us a picture of a fashionable society. The central figure in this image could be a pretty society woman, and the other characters are a rash youth, a foolish dandy and a few frivolous women. Instead of deep and real passions as found in ancient epics, we tend to bump into a succession of mock passions within the Rape of the Lock.

The action of The Rape of the Lock activates a trivial incident—the separating a lock of hair from a lady's head. Such a thing had taken place in reality. One lord Petre cut off a lock of hair from the head of Lady Arabella Fermor. There was a quarrel between the two families, and Pope was requested to make a jest of the incident, and 'laugh them together'. This was the occasion of the composition of the poem. Pope did give to the world a fine work of wit—the best mock-heroic poem in the English language, but we do not know whether the families were reconciled.

The theme of the poem is suggested in the invocation, as in an epic poem, but the theme is ridiculously trivial, in comparison with the grand theme of an epic. The action opens with a mock-heroic manner with the awakening of Belinda, the heroine of the poem. Belinda is that the terribly god of beauty, and the luster of her eyes surpasses that of the sun, who peeped timorously through the white curtains in Belinda's room: "Sol through white curtains shot a fearful ray, / And opened those eyes that must eclipse the day."

The whole structure of The Rape of the Lock is solid within the epic mood, but it could not be a serious epic because the incident is trivial—so we have the mock-heroic or heroi-comical poem. The literary composition is split into Cantos like AN heroic poem, and there are ironic parallels to the main Incidents of the epic. The literary composition begins with AN invocation in epic tradition: "Say, what strange motive, Goddness! could compel / A refined lord to assault a mild belle?" As in epics, in The Rape of the Lock, too, divine beings are portrayed. Belinda is within the divine care of the sylphs: "Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished 'care, / Of thousand bright inhabitants of air". But then the sylphs are fragile, airy beings and they are helpless before the caprices of men. Despite all their concern for Belinda, her lovely lock of hair is raped by the naughty Baron. There is the mischievous gnome who, like Milton's Satan, is intent upon making Belinda miserable and thereby all her admirers. The gnome addresses the wayward Queen who rules the sex from fifteen to fifty, thus: "Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin, / That single act gives half the world the spleen."

The epic always uses the supernatural element. In The epos there square measure gods and goddesses; within the Rape of the Lock, there square measure the sylphs and gnomes. These aerial spirits square measure tiny and insignificant things, and are, therefore, specifically keep with the triviality of the theme. They guard the person of the heroine and once there's a fight between the followers of Belinda and people of the Baron; they participate within the fight, like the gods and goddesses in the Trojan War: "Propped on their bodkin spears, the spirits survey, / The growing combat or assist the fray."

An epic poem must contain some episodes also. In keeping with this observe Pope has introduced the episode of the sport of Ombre that is delineated in nice detail. There is also the hazardous journey of Umbriel to the Cave of Spleen. Then there's the battle between the lords and girls a bit like the battles in poesy. But within the true impersonation vogue this battle is fought with fans and snuff rather than with swords and spears.

There square measure single combats additionally between Belinda and also the Baron and between Clarissa and Sir Plume. Belinda's toilet is another engaging account in which Pope has attributed in a perfect mock-heroic manner, the solemnity of a religious observance to the luxurious toilet of a lady of fashion and frivolity. Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux, are all brought to the same table and the slight and the series are all strangely synthesized.

The Rape of the Lock is a rare instance in which the slight theme is given an exalted treatment for satirical purposes. All through the poem, a pose of importance is given to all that is thoroughly unimportant and insignificant and practically meaningless and farcical. The terribly conception of writing AN epic on the rape of a lock of hair is funny and bears testimony to the poet's effort to create the microscopic nice and the great little.

In The Rape of the Lock the balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity is nicely trimmed: the little is made great and the great made little. It is the triumph of unimportant, the apotheosis of foppery and folly.