Sports

a tribute to "the breach of the lock"

Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

The Rape of the lock is not just an exquisitely witty example of perfect satire, it’s an exceptionally beautiful candidate that questions man’s greatest achievements in brainpower, for the kind of grace that is an immortal goal in every man. Lock Rape is a rare satire based on a true incident in the lives of Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre, where Lord Petre at a ball was so enraptured by Miss Fermor that she proceeded to cut off a lock of his hair. This very incident gave rise to intense rivalries between the two respectively distinguished families, who we are told were otherwise on better and more cordial terms. Pope, imbued and ignited by both Muse and his imagination, went ahead to concoct a story that elaborated on the conceit and ridiculousness of undertaking such an unnecessary enterprise as a breach for an unworthy and unspeakably insignificant reason. Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock is believed to have been instrumental in redeeming the lost cordiality and friendship between them and uttering the buried hatchet. In the following fragments, I will dwell on what I consider the cardinal songs of the poem. So they go on…

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Before summarizing the third canto, it is essential to remember that Pope constantly mocks the exploits of Homer and Virgil in epic fashion, establishing the most fundamental and draconic principle of allowing some resemblance to the genre of producing a mock epic. The third and fourth books, with the single exception of the Homeric battle in the fifth book, accumulate almost all the key examples of parodied or satirized fragments of the majestic epic approach. Even in a separate essay by Pope himself, he coldly and effortlessly mocks the epic motif and infers that the epic style of writing is drowned in invariant conventional lacunae that can only scarcely qualify as stylistic stipulations or an ideological phenomenon.

Now, summarizing Pope’s mock epic can involve a very abstract approach, as is paraphrasing poetry. Written for the 18th-century layman, the satire can generally be intriguingly supposed to mark the hypocrisy of the aristocratic class, and if such an advent is to be welcomed, then the third canto is the vastest episode in such a stinging enterprise. Debunking the vanity involved behind the walls of Hampton Court’s private rooms, Pope concentrates on imagining a haughty, hypocritical stubbornness of a superfluous class who openly paint canvases to embellish their mines or natures in general with unusual box-like airs. snuff and cards. -games. Much space has been given to the neat portrayal of the card game, Ombre, which has been safely imitated from ‘Scacchia of Vida’, and with such an example in punitive satire, perhaps Pope intends to punish the vain, grotesque and temperamental. highly refutable elitist and sophisticated dispositions unworthy of a haughty and elevated class of the aristocracy. It is during the card game that Belinda meets the Baron and defeats him in the game.

The proceedings are conducted in such a way that the Baron, so spurred on by Belinda’s unerring and seductive charms, prepares to cut off a lock of her hair. Although no reasons have been given, Clarissa is the one who lends the baron the scissors to begin the nefarious act. At these junctures, it is perhaps the sylphs (Pop borrowed the idea of ​​invisible beings from a little French book called Le Comte de Gabalis) that are not only a great source of amusement, but provide a certain downright intensity and punch. nervous and adventurous character. ho zest to the scene – ‘Swift to the lock a miles sprites repair’. Some sylphs tugged on Belinda’s earring about three times, causing her to turn a bit, not enough to see the Baron with the ‘engine’. Some sylphs humorously try, playfully but unsuccessfully, to blow the endangered lock to make it move, move.

Ariel, Belinda’s personal sylph, tries to lead all the other sylphs, but later discovers that since Belinda has some delicate but hidden feelings for the baron, he too obediently withdraws. The deed is done. The Baron cuts a lock of Belinda’s hair with the ‘Fatal Forfex’ extended. The immediate denouement explains how a sylph ventures between the blades of the scissors to stop the process but is divided in two, whose verse is an admirable parody of the Miltonian idea of ​​a wounded Satan -‘The sword girded, with discontinuous wound, passed through him; but the ethereal substance closed, Not long divisible’. At the end of the song, Pope gives a comic eulogy to the invention that is steel and how more than once he has confirmed the doom of man. In general, it is fair to point out that this song might be the fullest of the five, because it contains all the real and effective action of the satire.

Omens have been general and generally conventional in a poet’s technique to imply, suggest, or foreshadow some coming adversity. Virgil did it to develop after Dido’s death. The abduction of Belinda’s lock is also preceded by alarming, humorous and comic prodigies, which can be discovered in the first song.

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Canto 4 discusses the sphere of the tamed supernatural, that is, the sylphs, in detail and with more creative ingenuity as Pope deliberates on the ‘dark cave of the Spleen’.

Summarizing:

Matters, in their turn, are sublimated and the scene changes to the cave of the spleen as a gnome or ‘a dark and brooding Spright’, Umbriel, races down or heads to the central earth, to the cave of the spleen. The spleen, although imagined in the text as a deity, is actually the personification of a melancholic disorder that prevails in ladies of the upper social strata due to intense lethargy, languor, and indolence. There are vicious images ruling the cave embedded with the enthroned, detached ‘misguided queen’, whom the gnome pleads to ‘touch Belinda in disgust’. The gnome returns with a bag of the queen’s full bounty and finds Belinda in Thalestris’s arms. Talestris, another virginal character to the poem thus far, was the implied queen of the Amazons. It is suggested that Umbriel spill all the disgusting contents of the bag on them both, and then start a menagerie, a whirlwind of fast-paced comic action that would carry off majestically in the fifth canto. Thalestris brandishes a violent and bellicose speech under supernatural influence and berates Belinda for her weak and helpless attitude. Then, we’re introduced to Sir Plume, who talks nothing but uncivil nonsense, nonsense, and nonsense. Sir George Brown, the man in whose honor the character was incriminated, took great offense and could not bear Sir Plume saying anything but nonsense and gibberish.

The Baron then appears and enforces his claim to the lock, destining it as his forever. Umbriel, the depraved gnome, springs into action once more when he breaks the vial of Sorrows and then the miserable and sad nymph, Belinda, steals the cynosure. She curses the day, curses Hampton Court, and curses her need for vanity that took her best, her favorite lock. She remembers the foreshadowing omens, and shows remorse for not paying due attention to them, and finally, she sums it up with a hint that:

Oh, if you had been cruel! I’ve been happy to be sixteen,

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!

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