Use of the Mock-epic Style in The Rape of the Lock Essay -- Rape Of Th

Use of the Mock-epos Style in The frustrate of the Lock The triumph of the Barons rape is in exactly the same high-pitched language as it would be if he were Hector. In The Rape of the Lock, pope uses the mock-epic style to satirise the seriousness with which a trivial misdemeanour (the larceny of a few strands of h bearing) and the ways of gender polarised society can be blown beyond all sense of proportion. Thus the male mentality, by the Baron, is portrayed as lacking depth or personality beyond that required to achieve its ends men objectify and devise strategems (4,120) to conquer their womanly obsessions they are victors (4,162) who self-importantly congratulate themselves as meriting wreaths of triumph (4,161) when they have seized what they desire. The Baron claims that the historied prize is his in perpetuity, whilst many conditions which will never be action (while fish in streams, or birds delight in air 4,163) remain unfulfilled. In this satirising of the epi c mould such trivial occurrences are substituted in place of truly fantastic possibilities (mighty cities falling, for instance) for the purpose of putting the locks divide into a more(prenominal) realistic perspective this is made even more explicit in the following canto (4,8 no-one ever felt such rage, resentment, and despair / as thou, sad virgin for thy ravished hair meaning that perhaps Belinda over-reacts, in Popes opinion, on the nose ever-so slightly.) He also then reinforces his satire with a broadening of humour, and a stab in the direction of then-popular culture specifically, Atalantis (4,165) was no great unchanging writing but a cheap, scandalous turn of fiction, notorious for its thinly concealed allusions to contemporary scandals, pe... ...rder of life.) Obviously the ultimate aim of the poem is to excuse the severity of the liberty taken in the theft of the lock (as seen in the minds of those involved in the familial dispute.) Mock epic assists Pope in a chieving this without being seen to trivialise the assaulted feelings of the victim the high language and drama of his work accords to the act of the locks severing a grossly inflated significance, which retains enough of its epic origins not to be viewed as derisive sarcasm. As a ironist Pope is therefore presenting for the appraisal of his readership the notion that the loss of the lock does not deserve the intensity of ill-feeling which has resulted from it. BIBLIOGRAPHY The Norton Anthology of English Literature 6th Edition, Volume 1, 1993 A Choice Of Popes Verse, edited by Peter Porter, Faber & Faber, 1971