Epic Conventions in The Rape of the Lock
             The Rape of the Lock is a poem that reflects a society where values have taken another form and that is not for the better. Alexander Pope in his writings takes the trivial and ordinary lifestyle of his fellow companions and transcends it in scope and size into grandiloquent and grandiose mock-epic. The writer uses elevated language to put his characters into their higher social standing and express their worries and concerns as they are the most important ones when they are so insignificant.
             The beginning of the poem introduces the idea of love and war which are classic epic conventions, and includes an invocation to the muse which happens to be some guy.
             The poem is abundant with images that are magnified and transformed into ridiculing and mocking characters that bring to our imagination only humor and laughter rather than the seriousness an epic genre would depict. Describing Belinda's pulchritude and elevating it to the point of being divine is not as much candid as it seems to be. Pope moreover uses irony as his primary tool for implying that semblance and social position is more valued in a woman than any moral or other values found in her. He illustrates her attractiveness by enumerating her jewelry – "the sparkling Cross she wore" and "the white breast", and her "iv'ry neck."
             It is interesting that not only the characters are represented in this lofty and elevated language but also their actions. Serving the coffee is a very good example and especially the moment where Clarissa abets Baron into cutting Belinda's lock. This moment is depicted as being from a knight's tale where the lady helps her knight with the armory and so is Clarissa giving him the scissors to accomplish his important plan.
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