Unit 3
Unit 3
Unit 3
Structure
3.1 INTRODUCTION
In the previous Unit, you were given a brief summary of the complete poem ‘The
Rape of the Lock’ that consists of five Cantos. It is important to know the entire
poem so that it becomes easy to understand Canto 3 which is prescribed for
detailed study.
The poem narrates a trivial incident involving two aristocratic families and
this incident is exaggerated into a full blown battle, almost paralleling the
classical battle between the Greeks and the Trojans depicted by Homer nearly
two thousand five hundred years ago in his monumental epic The Iliad. The
Iliad remains an epic poem and does not feature satirical elements like ‘The
Rape of the Lock’ which is both a mock epic poem and a poetic satire. It is
considered as one amongst the great satires of English literature. Alexander
Pope and John Dryden were the chief poet satirists of this period while the
celebrated prose satirist was Jonathan Swift.
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Analysis of Canto 3
3.2 THEME OF ‘THE RAPE OF THE LOCK’
Pope’s poem ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is based on a real life incident in which a
British Peer, Lord Petre, fascinated by the beauty of an aristocratic lady, Arabella
Fermor, clips a lock of her hair to preserve it as a memento. This results in a
fight between the two families. John Caryll—a friend both of Pope and of the
two families—requested Pope to write a poem satirizing the triviality and
foolishness of the dispute and engineer a reconciliation between the two warring
families.
Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is a masterly satire where he interweaves a real
but trivial incident into an epic. Pope modeled his poem on the theme and style
of the Greek Classics, The Iliad and The Odyssey and juxtaposed the silly conflict
between the two families with the battle between two mighty armies depicted in
the great epics. Thus the poem is labelled a mock heroic poem. While the story is
essentially about the triviality of the fight between two families over the cutting
a ringlet off Arabella’s gorgeous hair, it also mirrors the vanity and the frivolous
life of the aristocrats in the 18th century. Pope uses the grandiose devices of the
ancient Greek epics to mock the inanities and vanities of 18th century courtiers
and ladies. The basic themes of the poem are:
• the triviality of courtly life,
• the heroine Belinda’s (who represents all the elite women) narcissistic
obsession with her beauty,
• the vanishing of her lock of hair pointing to the short shelf life of youthful
beauty,
• the ascendancy of the lock of hair to heavens to shine like a star in the
sky forever, thereby reflecting the immortality of beauty that is best
captured in art and poetry in contrast to the evanescence of physical
beauty,
• the gender disparity in a patriarchal society that shows the male conquest
of women (the snipping of Belinda’s lock by the Baron) and
• lastly the wisdom in Clarissa’s speech (which is essentially Pope’s speech)
about the fleeting nature of beauty with an inherent message to focus on
moral uprightness rather than focus on physical beauty that is of a
transient nature.
(Check your answers with those given at the end of the Unit.)
(ii) Why is ‘The Rape of the Lock’ known as a mock heroic poem?
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........................................................................................................................ Analysis of Canto 3
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of the Unit.)
(ii) Give examples of Pope’s satirical comments about the 18th century aristocratic
society in Canto 3.
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of the Unit.) 217
ALEXANDER POPE:
‘THE RAPE OF THE 3.6 GLOSSARY
LOCK’
Memento: Keepsake marking the memory of an incident or an event
or a particular time and experience
Engineer: To arrange for something to happen, especially in a useful
and skillful way
Inanities: Lack of sense, meaning, substance and ideas
Narcissistic Excessive preoccupation with or admiration of oneself
obsession:
Muses: Greek Goddesses who are a source of artistic inspiration
Euphemism: A mild, indirect, or vague term for one that is considered
harsh, blunt, or offensive
Evanescence: Disappearance/vanishing
Patriarchal: A society where the head of the families are men
Transient: Passing with time
Commensurate: Corresponding, proportionate
Nymphs: Water elementals who live in streams, rivers, cloud...
Levity : Lack of seriousness
Ombre: A card game with three players
Ariel: Angel in Christian and Jewish mysticism
Sylphs: In classical mythology sylphs are imaginary beings-both
male and female that inhabit the air.
Matadrore: In Card games, one of the highest trumps
Spadilles: In card games cards (in ombre and quadrille) known as the
ace of spades
Manillio : The second best trump
Basto: The ace of Clubs
Plaebeian: One of the common people
Knave: Jack in a pack of cards, A playing card showing the figure
of a servant or Soldier
Pam: The Knave of clubs
See-saw: Oscillating from one extreme to another
Codille: In the game of ombre a term indicating that the game is
won
Scylla: The mythological reference to Scylla how she was changed
into a bird forever after she plucked one of her father’s
218 hairs, a magical hair on which his power depended.
Analysis of Canto 3
3.7 SUMMING UP
In this unit we have discussed the following:
• what is a classical epic
• what are the characteristics of the classical epic
• what is a mock epic. How do you distinguish a mock epic from a classical
epic
• the analysis of Canto 3 of ‘The Rape of the Lock’ and
• the interweaving of satire into the mock epic poem
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