rapeofthelock2

The hero-comicai poem contains the conventional elements of heroic poetry, yet Pope impiements humor and exaggeration within this literary work

DICTION:

Poetic diction is the term used to refer to the linguistic style, the vocabulary, and the metaphors used in the writing of poetry

Pope employs a "high-toned" poetic diction and the stately iambic pentameter of dignified epics like Paradise Lost. And of course, Pope's mastery of the heroic coupiet, and the baianced, measured rhythms of his lines, lend an even greater air of sołemnity. To achieve this effect, he inverts the syntax of ordinary speech, as in these lines:

"Her lively looks a spritely mmd disclose" (ii, 9),

"Favors to nonę, to all she smiles extends" (II, 11), and "Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike" (ii, 13).

The effect of this inversion is to add rhetoricai weight to the end of the linę; the sentence feels particularly "compiete." At the same time, the reader is always aware that the poem is a joke.

Pope comes right out and says so. For example, one epic tradition is to open with a statement of purpose and an inyocation to the Muse. Pope States his purpose as being to sing of the ”dire offense" that springs from "amorous eauses* and the "mighty contest s" that rise from "trivia3 things" (1-2) — hardly the lofty and weighty subjects of epic poetry — and nam.es Ms Muse "Caryll" (3) for his friend John Caryll, the relative of the yoimg lord who stole the lock of hair from Arabella Fermor

REFERENCES TO PARADISE LOST:

Pope imitated the characteristics of Homer^łs epics, as well as łater epics such as The Aeneid (Vergil), The Divine Comedy (Dante), and Paradise Lost (Milton)

Pope employs a "high-toned" poetic diction and the stately iambic pentameter of dignified epics like Paradise Lost

The epic battle of the sexes in canto five recałłs the Homeric battles in the Iliad and the battle of the angels in Paradise Lost. Since this battle, however, is between the sexes, no one can die, as no one could die in the battle in Paradise Lost, sińce angels are immortal (eutting off a lock of Belinda's hair)

Recalling the description of Eve and comparing it to Bełinda.

Mischievous gnomę compared to miltons satan The gnomę intents to make Belinda miserable

Notable epics, such as John MiIton’s Paradise Lost, are set in appropriately grand locales, such as Heaven and Heli, over expansive periods of time. Pope manipulates and minimizes the epic scalę by łocating the action of his poem in compressed, largely domestic settings in London.

SYLLEPSIS:

- When a single word that eoyems or modtfies twoor morę others most te understood differ entły with respecfe to eachof those word& A combination of grammatical parallelism and semantic incongruity, often with a witty or comical effect e.g.:

In the following example, "rend (rozdzierać)"govems both objects, but the Jirst rending isfigurative; the second, literał:

Rend your heart, and not your clothes

Alexander Pope was a master of die literary figurę. He makes use of syllepsis in his poem.

Take this coupiet from The Rape of the Lock:

Here thou, great ANNA! whom three reałms obey,

Dost sometimes counseł take - and sometimes tea.

When he links "counsel (rada)" and "tea" together as direct objects of "take," he creates a syllepsis, a figurę in which two or morę words are linked to a single word in such a way that the word must be understood differently for each.

In this case, "tekę" means "receive" in one case and "ingest" in the other. The result is often comic, depending on the disparity between the two things that are linked.

In this case, Pope is suggesting that Queen Annę is a rather friyołous, ordinary sort of woman who would take her goveming duties about as seriously as altemoon tea.