A Comparison of Societal Chaos in Rape of the Lock and The Prelude
             Romantic writers of the late 18th century into the early 19th century were then thought to be revolutionary authors influencing the world and igniting change in society through their use of poetry and prose. Two such authors of that era approached and affected their times in very dissimilar ways, yet their views on the social order of their day were very much the same. In Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, the social order of late 18th century England is depicted as stale and confined to manners of gentility and nobility. Pope's traditional epic (also referred to as a Mock epic) persuades the reader to extend beyond the ordinary confinements of that society. William Wordsworth, in Book 7 of The Prelude, describes in a more serious manner the need for freedom of the individual mind and escape from the oppressiveness of an industrialized structured society. Both Pope and Wordsworth share a common image of the degradation of society, yet portray their disdain, one in a less serious manner than the other. Discussed in this essay will be the compared and contrasted views of a chaotic society in Wordsworth's The Prelude (Book 7), and Pope's poem The Rape of the Lock from a historical perspective, meaning the era in which both Pope and Wordsworth composed their work.
             Alexander Pope used the very structure of the formal and majestic epic in his The Rape of the Lock, to underscore the ridiculousness of his own society and their trivial practices and beliefs. Pope used a learned and stiff diction to effectively treat his trivial subject matter (therape? of Belinda's most beautiful curl) in the most striking fashion. Pope further belittles the ideals of his society by introducing a voice of reason, in the character of Clarissa, towards the end of the poem who outwardly and blatantly ridicules the traditions of her contemporaries. In a perfect marriage of the tri
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