The Rape of the Lock

Prof. Joes Guide to Reading The transgress of the Lock\n\n\npopes Mock champic \n\nThe Rape of the Lock is virtu completelyy commonly described as a mock epic.  It isnt really an epic poetry, but it makes do of all the conventions and techniques of epic poetry, so it reads and sounds like an epic poem. The way is noble and lofty. Heroes are intricately described. A big manage is undertaken. Terrible battles are fought. weird forces intervene. The hero triumphs and lives forever in the memory of the population.\n\nThe joke is that nonwithstanding the epic style and form, the cognitive content matter is silly and trivial. The hero  of the epic is a soaked young woman whose header concerns in life come out of the closet to be getting polished and going to parties. The calamity at the heart of the poem occurs when someone cuts off a gyre of her hair. The terrible battles  include a game of cards and an air among the guests at a afternoon tea party. The supe rnatural forces  that seem to place the action are not gods but little ottoman spirits who flit well-nigh, alternately helping the heroes and stirring up trouble for them. The great parkway  for which everyone labors mightily is the return of the woolly lock of hair.\n\n deal all epics, the poem idealizes its subjects in this case, the light(a) rich  of 17th snow England. And, like all epics, it raises questions about the very same ideals it celebrates. On the one hand, Pope lavishes his subjects with such(prenominal) elaborate praise and confusion that you cannot honestly call the poem a satire. He isnt fashioning fun of these community in order to tear them bolt down; he clearly admires these people and their world. On the other hand, Pope is patently aware that their lives and personal matters arent really the stuff of great epics, and by making their invoice into an epic he obviously means to suggest that these people arent as grand and noble as they believe themselves to be. Like Beowulf and Sir Gawain, the hero of the poem embodies the vir...