The Rape of the Lock

Prof. Joes Guide to reading material The Rape of the hush\n\n\npopes fling Epic \n\nThe Rape of the Lock is most commonly expound as a mock desperate.  It isnt re bothy an expansive meter, simply it makes use of all the conventions and techniques of epic poetry, so it reads and sounds like an epic meter. The dash is noble and lofty. Heroes be elaborately described. A bully cause is undertaken. Terrible battles be fought. Supernatural forces intervene. The hero triumphs and lives ceaselessly in the memory of the pack.\n\nThe laughter is that despite the epic style and form, the subject matter is dizzy and trivial. The hero  of the epic is a wealthy young woman whose chief concerns in conduct appear to be acquire dressed and going to parties. The incident at the heart of the poem occurs when someone cuts off a lock of her hair. The terrible battles  take a game of card game and an argument among the guests at a tea party. The supernatural forces  that d epend to steer the action be not gods but unretentive fairy spirits who fade about, alternately helping the heroes and stirring up trouble for them. The vast cause  for which everyone labors mightily is the margin call back of the lost lock of hair.\n\n worry all epics, the poem idealizes its subjects in this case, the idle rich  of seventeenth century England. And, like all epics, it raises questions about the very selfsame(prenominal) ideals it celebrates. On the one hand, Pope lavishes his subjects with such elaborate value and admiration that you cannot honestly call the poem a satire. He isnt reservation fun of these people in order to frivol away them down; he understandably admires these people and their world. On the other(a) hand, Pope is obviously aware that their lives and affairs arent really the lunge of great epics, and by making their story into an epic he obviously means to draw out that these people arent as elevated and noble as they debate th emselves to be. Like Beowulf and Sir Gawain, the hero of the poem embodies the vir...