Pope Handout and Reminder

REMINDER: We do have class on Monday--I've pushed back the due date for Paper #2 to Wednesday. That means no class on Wednesday. Read Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Cantos 1-2 for Monday (questions to follow). Below is the handout I gave to the class for those who weren't here on Friday.

THE MOCK EPIC IN THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Acheans countless losses,

hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,

great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,

feasts for the dogs and birds,

and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.

Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,

Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

--From The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles

What dire offense from amorous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things,

I sing—This verse to CARYLL, Muse! is due;

This, even Belinda may vouchsafe to view:

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,

If she inspire, and he approve my lays. [lays are verses]

    Say what strange motive, Goddess! could

    compel

A well-bred Lord to assault a gentle Belle?

O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,

Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?

In tasks so bold, can little men engage,

And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?

--from Canto I, The Rape of the Lock

“In The Iliad, the Trojan War is sparked by Paris’ abduction of the Greek beauty Helen, daughter of Zeus and the mortal Leda. In Pope’s poem, a quarrel erupts between two families over a stolen lock of hair, and the incident is playfully narrated as if it were a war. The poem is a mock epic in that it shrinks the immense scale of Homeric narrative down to domestic size: instead of a bloody battlefield, there is the “velvet plain” of a gaming table; instead of engaging in hand-to-hand combat, people slay each other with chilly glances and snide comments; instead of encompassing long, wearying years, the action takes place from noon (when spoiled aristocrats wake up) to nightfall (when the lock if magically transformed into stars); instead of a visit to Hades, there is a descent to the fanciful Cave of Spleen, the source of hypochondria and bad moods in the idle rich.

Pope based the poem on a controversy reported to him by his friend John Caryll: the young Lord Petre had cut a lock of hair from the head of his intended, Arabella Fermor, and the latter retaliated by cutting off their wedding engagement. In a time before photography, keeping a snippet of a loved one’s hair as a souvenir was an ordinary custom, but doing so without the person’s permission was simply rude. But was it a serious enough offense to cause such a fury?”  

“Introduction” to The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, Christopher R. Miller