Episode 326: “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope

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On this week’s episode of The Literary Life, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks will discuss Pope’s mock epic poem, “The Rape of the Lock.” They begin the conversation by talking about two types of satire to set us up for an accurate understand of this poem. They also talk about the form of a mock epic poem and a burlesque. This conversation brings out the various allusions to classical heroic epic poems juxtaposed with the frivolous in this story.

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Commonplace Quotes:

[Pope’s] publications were for the same reason never hasty. He is said to have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under his inspection: it is at least certain that he ventured nothing without nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside, and the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew that the mind is always enamored of its own productions, and did not trust his first fondness. He consulted his friend, and listened with great willingness to criticism; and, what was of more importance, he consulted himself, and let nothing pass against his own judgment.

Samuel Johnson, from Lives of the Poets

He then applies the point to Pope and The Rape of the Lock which, he says, “is a perfect (and never obsolete) period piece.”

C.S. Lewis, as quoted in Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis (ed. by Thomas L. Marton)

Books and Links Mentioned:

The Iliad by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

Major Works by Alexander Pope

Galahad and the Grail by Malcolm Guite

Selection from “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”

by John Dryden

GRAND CHORUS
As from the pow'r of sacred lays
         The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
         To all the bless'd above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
   This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
         The dead shall live, the living die,
         And music shall untune the sky.

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