The Rape of the Lock
Mock-heroic snipped curl
The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic poem by Alexander Pope, published in 1712 and expanded in 1714.
The title refers to the snipping of a lock of hair from a young woman's head—rape here meaning seizure or theft, not sexual assault.
Pope treats this trivial incident with the elaborate machinery of epic poetry, complete with supernatural beings and heroic battles, satirizing the vanity of aristocratic society by inflating a petty quarrel to Homeric proportions.
- Alexander PopeGeorgian era versifier
- PopeCatholic Church's supreme leader
- mock-heroicSatirizing epic conventions
- epic poemExtended heroic narrative verse
- heroic coupletRhymed pentameter pair
Belinda · sylphs · scissors · couplet · vanity · dressing table · satire · social satire · Augustan · curl · tress · petticoat · Hampton Court · coffee · cards · card game · ombre · epic
- Alexander Popeheroic couplet, Twickenham, epistles
- Augustan literatureheroic couplet, mock-heroic, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Augustan age
- mock epics
- Mock-Epicmock-epic, mock-heroic, heroic couplet, bathos, anticlimax
- Pope works
- satirelampoon, parody, parody account, political satire, spoof
The Rape of the LockParadise Lost
Epic of humanity's expulsion
Beowulf · The Divine Comedy · tragedy · Homer · Virgil
The Rape of the LockKing Lear
Hamlet · War and Peace · Antigone · The Waste Land · war poetry
rape, rapist, lock, locked, locking, locker, locksmith, unlock, unlocked