Rape of teh Lock
As the name indicates, the Mock-Epic is a literary form that burlesques the 'classical epics' by using characteristics of the epic -- the invocation of a deity, a formal statement of theme, the division of the work into books and cantos, grandiose speeches, battles and supernatural machinery- to reveal the ridiculousness of a certain subject. The main effect of employing techniques of an epic is, however, not so much to have fun with the epic, but to deflate a subject or characters that by contrast appear particularly trivial. One of the best examples of a Mock Epic is Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, which uses its highly polished verses, mordantly satirical heroic couplets, and intelligence to satirize not only the overwhelming complexity and seriousness of subject matters found within epic poems, but the fuss that results when an young lord cuts a small lock of hair from the head of an young beauty. In The Rape of the Lock, Pope expends much energy preparing the audience for a 'battle' (card game) that will shortly take place, that of English intrigue at Hampton Court. Pope treats the subject with seriousness, depicting the story as a true epic. Pope's intention was possibly to dilute, with humor, the ill feeling arou
The white-robed maiden approaches the altar-like dressing table where the vials are laid out "in mystic order. Just as Eve in Milton's Paradise Lost is beguiled by her own image as she sees it reflected in the water of one of Eden's rivers, to her own image Belinda "bends, to that her eyes she rears. " She raises her eyes and sees not the Cross but her own reflection. " The narrative begins with the heroine asleep, being counseled by a sylph about the dangers (satirically statement) that she will confront that day. Thus, Pope has successfully taken the audience from epic poetry in form, to mock epic in reality. " Their "conversions" would not be through their perception of the altruistic symbolism of the Holy Cross, but through their adoration of her physical charms. Canto IV of Pope's unreal epic, his contestants to the their first battlefield, the card tables. " Belinda wakes up, roused by her lapdog Shock, and dresses for the day, with only the most indistinct recollection of the warning. Thus, his work is classified more precisely as a bemused satire. It is obvious that Pope deems the effects of beauty on the women entity (body, mind and soul) as silly. As stated by the OED, Pope's work is a 'reflection of the obtuseness and stupidity of people, of the superficiality and meaningless of their lives, and of the barrenness and lack of substance in their values. "( He establishes immediately the fact that the battlefields in this epic will be in the war between the nymphs and swains: "Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel/ A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle!/ Oh, say, what stranger cause, yet unexplored/ Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?"Pope transforms the real-life Arabella into Belinda, a paragon of female charm whose name is Latin for "lovely to behold. The entire fairy band tries to warn her, but to no avail. / Oh, thoughtless mortals ever blind to fate,/ Too soon dejected, and too soon elate. These sylphs represent Meddling Gods and Goddesses that exist in most epic poems; Pope diminishes the idea of these characters by choosing to make them appear as small, and almost insignificant creature.
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