The Rape of The Lock : Analysis , theme and form

The Rape of the Lock is a humorous indictment of the vanities and idleness of 18th-century high society. Basing his poem on a real incident among families of his acquaintance, Pope intended his verses to cool hot tempers and to encourage his friends to laugh at their own folly.
The poem is perhaps the most outstanding example in the English language of the genre of mock-epic. The epic had long been considered one of the most serious of literary forms; it had been applied, in the classical period, to the lofty subject matter of love and war, and, more recently, by Milton, to the intricacies of the Christian faith. The strategy of Pope’s mock-epic is not to mock the form itself, but to mock his society in its very failure to rise to epic standards, exposing its pettiness by casting it against the grandeur of the traditional epic subjects and the bravery and fortitude of epic heroes: Pope’s mock-heroic treatment in The Rape of the Lock underscores the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all proportion, and the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues. The society on display in this poem is one that fails to distinguish between things that matter and things that do not. The poem mocks the men it portrays by showing them as unworthy of a form that suited a more heroic culture. Thus the mock-epic resembles the epic in that its central concerns are serious and often moral, but the fact that the approach must now be satirical rather than earnest is symptomatic of how far the culture has fallen.
Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is intricate and exhaustive. The Rape of the Lock is a poem in which every element of the contemporary scene conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that makes the poem surprising and delightful. Pope’s transformations are numerous, striking, and loaded with moral implications. The great battles of epic become bouts of gambling and flirtatious tiffs. The great, if capricious, Greek and Roman gods are converted into a relatively undifferentiated army of basically ineffectual sprites. Cosmetics, clothing, and jewelry substitute for armor and weapons, and the rituals of religious sacrifice are transplanted to the dressing room and the altar of love.
The verse form of The Rape of the Lock is the heroic couplet; Pope still reigns as the uncontested master of the form. The heroic couplet consists of rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines (lines of ten syllables each, alternating stressed and unstressed syllables). Pope’s couplets do not fall into strict iambs, however, flowering instead with a rich rhythmic variation that keeps the highly regular meter from becoming heavy or tedious. Pope distributes his sentences, with their resolutely parallel grammar, across the lines and half-lines of the poem in a way that enhances the judicious quality of his ideas. Moreover, the inherent balance of the couplet form is strikingly well suited to a subject matter that draws on comparisons and contrasts: the form invites configurations in which two ideas or circumstances are balanced, measured, or compared against one another. It is thus perfect for the evaluative, moralizing premise of the poem, particularly in the hands of this brilliant poet.

The Rape of The Lock : Summery

Belinda arises to prepare for the day’s social activities after sleeping late. Her guardian sylph, Ariel, warned her in a dream that some disaster will befall her, and promises to protect her to the best of his abilities. Belinda takes little notice of this oracle, however. After an elaborate ritual of dressing and primping, she travels on the Thames River to Hampton Court Palace, an ancient royal residence outside of London, where a group of wealthy young socialites are gathering for a party. Among them is the Baron, who has already made up his mind to steal a lock of Belinda’s hair. He has risen early to perform and elaborate set of prayers and sacrifices to promote success in this enterprise. When the partygoers arrive at the palace, they enjoy a tense game of cards, which Pope describes in mock-heroic terms as a battle. This is followed by a round of coffee. Then the Baron takes up a pair of scissors and manages, on the third try, to cut off the coveted lock of Belinda’s hair. Belinda is furious. Umbriel, a mischievous gnome, journeys down to the Cave of Spleen to procure a sack of sighs and a flask of tears which he then bestows on the heroine to fan the flames of her ire. Clarissa, who had aided the Baron in his crime, now urges Belinda to give up her anger in favor of good humor and good sense, moral qualities which will outlast her vanities. But Clarissa’s moralizing falls on deaf ears, and Belinda initiates a scuffle between the ladies and the gentlemen, in which she attempts to recover the severed curl. The lock is lost in the confusion of this mock battle, however; the poet consoles the bereft Belinda with the suggestion that it has been taken up into the heavens and immortalized as a constellation.

The Rape of The Lock : Characters

Belinda -  Belinda is based on the historical Arabella Fermor, a member of Pope’s circle of prominent Roman Catholics. Robert, Lord Petre (the Baron in the poem) had precipitated a rift between their two families by snipping off a lock of her hair.
The Baron  -  This is the pseudonym for the historical Robert, Lord Petre, the young gentleman in Pope’s social circle who offended Arabella Fermor and her family by cutting off a lock of her hair. In the poem’s version of events, Arabella is known as Belinda.

Caryl -  The historical basis for the Caryl character is John Caryll, a friend of Pope and of the two families that had become estranged over the incident the poem relates. It was Caryll who suggested that Pope encourage a reconciliation by writing a humorous poem.

Goddess -  The muse who, according to classical convention, inspires poets to write their verses

Shock -  Belinda’s lapdog

Ariel -  Belinda’s guardian sylph, who oversees an army of invisible protective deities 

Umbriel -  The chief gnome, who travels to the Cave of Spleen and returns with bundles of sighs and tears to aggravate Belinda’s vexation

Brillante -  The sylph who is assigned to guard Belinda’s earrings

Momentilla -  The sylph who is assigned to guard Belinda’s watch

Crispissa -  The sylph who is assigned to guard Belinda’s “fav’rite Lock”

Clarissa -  A woman in attendance at the Hampton Court party. She lends the Baron the pair of scissors with which he cuts Belinda’s hair, and later delivers a moralizing lecture.

Thalestris -  Belinda’s friend, named for the Queen of the Amazons and representing the historical Gertrude Morley, a friend of Pope’s and the wife of Sir George Browne (rendered as her “beau,” Sir Plume, in the poem). She eggs Belinda on in her anger and demands that the lock be returned.

Sir Plume -  Thalestris’s “beau,” who makes an ineffectual challenge to the Baron. He represents the historical Sir George Browne, a member of Pope’s social circle.

 

The Rape of The Lock : Context

Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688. As a Roman Catholic living during a time of Protestant consolidation in England, he was largely excluded from the university system and from political life, and suffered certain social and economic disadvantages because of his religion as well. He was self-taught to a great extent, and was an assiduous scholar from a very early age. He learned several languages on his own, and his early verses were often imitations of poets he admired. His obvious talent found encouragement from his father, a linen-draper, as well as from literary-minded friends. At the age of twelve, Pope contracted a form of tuberculosis that settled in his spine, leaving him stunted and misshapen and causing him great pain for much of his life. He never married, though he formed a number of lifelong friendships in London’s literary circles, most notably with Jonathan Swift.
Pope wrote during what is often called the Augustan Age of English literature (indeed, it is Pope’s career that defines the age). During this time, the nation had recovered from the English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution, and the regained sense of political stability led to a resurgence of support for the arts. For this reason, many compared the period to the reign of Augustus in Rome, under whom both Virgil and Horace had found support for their work. The prevailing taste of the day was neoclassical, and 18th-century English writers tended to value poetry that was learned and allusive, setting less value on originality than the Romantics would in the next century. This literature also tended to be morally and often politically engaged, privileging satire as its dominant mode.
The Rape of the Lock is one of the most famous English-language examples of the mock-epic. Published in its first version in 1712, when Pope was only 23 years old, the poem served to forge his reputation as a poet and remains his most frequently studied work. The inspiration for the poem was an actual incident among Pope’s acquaintances in which Robert, Lord Petre, cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor’s hair, and the young people’s families fell into strife as a result. John Caryll, another member of this same circle of prominent Roman Catholics, asked Pope to write a light poem that would put the episode into a humorous perspective and reconcile the two families. The poem was originally published in a shorter version, which Pope later revised. In this later version he added the “machinery,” the retinue of supernaturals who influence the action as well as the moral of the tale.
After the publication of The Rape of the Lock, Pope spent many years translating the works of Homer. During the ten years he devoted to this arduous project, he produced very few new poems of his own but refined his taste in literature (and his moral, social, and political opinions) to an incredible degree. When he later recommenced to write original poetry, Pope struck a more serious tone than the one he gave to The Rape of the Lock. These later poems are more severe in their moral judgments and more acid in their satire: Pope’s Essay on Man is a philosophical poem on metaphysics, ethics, and human nature, while in the Dunciad Pope writes a scathing exposé of the bad writers and pseudo-intellectuals of his day.

Holy Thursday by William Blake Explication

“Holy Thursday” has two different parts written at different times. They both come from the “Songs of Innocence” work by William Blake. The first one discusses a religious celebration called Holy Thursday in which all the participating schools would celebrate the accusation of Jesus forty days after Easter. The speaker is a third person observer who doesn’t really exist. A group of children walk to church to sing in celebration.
Almost the entire poem is in a very cheery and bright tone. It describes the children as innocent and it compares them to the waters of Thames and to flowers of London. The reader sees the children as perfect, innocent beings. The children begin to sing in the church raising their hands toward the heavens. The author is vivid at this point in the poem; two similes are used describing the children singing, comparing their singing to a mighty wind raising the song to heaven, and harmonious thunderings among the heavens. The last line of the poem offers advice to the reader. It says that if you drive an angel from your door, you should cherish the pity that will befall you. This seems to put the entire poem into a new light, as if the purpose of it was to preach religion, not celebrate it. Although I would not go so far as to say the poem is a religious propaganda based on the subtle suggestion in the last line.
The poem has a simple story and a simple meaning. Like most religious poems, this poem describes a perfect person in the eyes of the particular religion, and shows it in all its innocence, then subtly hints at the imperfection of all other things. This poem is not quite as straight foreword in expressing the imperfection of the reader as opposed to the perfection of the children, which I liked very much. Most religious poems seem so one sided and insulting. They seem to only serve a single purpose, to influence religious beliefs upon people using guilt or inflicting low self-esteem.
The second poem has a similar theme, innocence of children, but it has a much more somber tone. The first stanza asks the question is it a holy thing to see a child born and turned to sin and misery. To see a child cared for and fed by a cold unholy person. The second stanza explains the confusion of the child; it does not know the world that it has been born into. The stanza asks another question, does the child cry for joy, or not? It also explains that so many children are born into poverty. The third stanza goes on to talk about the life ahead of the child born. It explains that his life will be filled with misery and unholy things will block his path. The last stanza, however, changes the tone. It gives hope, explaining that where good things flourish, a child will never be in poverty.
Although I do not like religious poems much and I prefer to seclude myself from organized or publicized religion, I enjoyed the poems. I especially enjoyed the second part even though it had a melancholy theme; I liked the imagery and metaphors.

"Dark Satanic Mills"

"Dark Satanic Mills"

Holly thursday by William Blake critical overview

Compare and Contrast William Blake’s Holy Thursday (I) of Innocence with Holy Thursday (II) of Experience.

The two poems: Holy Thursday I, II reflect Blake’s theory of contrariness. The tile of the poems refers to the Thursday before Easter Sunday, observed by Christians in commemoration of Christ’s Last Supper in which the ceremony of the washing of the feet is performed: the celebrant washes the feet of 12 people to commemorate Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet. In England a custom survives of giving alms to the poor.

So the title has religious significance. Both the poems deal with the same theme; but their approach to the theme is different; the first being light and ironic and the second being more savage and direct. I first analyse Holy Thursday (I) and then Holy Thursday (II) and finally, I will compare and contrast both the poems.

“Till into the high dome of Paul’s they

like Thames‘ waters flow.”

The poem’s (Holy Thursday I) dramatic setting refers to a traditional Charity School service at St. Paul‘s Cathedral. The first stanza captures the movement of the children from the schools to the church, likening the lines of children to the Thames River, which flows through the heart of London: the children are carried along by the current of their innocent faith. In the second stanza, the metaphor for the children changes. First they become “flowers of London town.” This comparison emphasizes their beauty and fragility; it undercuts the assumption that these destitute children are the city’s refuse and burden, rendering them instead as London‘s fairest and finest. Thus Blake emphasizes their innocence and beauty in Holy Thursday I. Next the children are described as resembling lambs in their innocence and meekness, as well as in the sound of their little voices. The image transforms the character of humming “multitudes,” into something heavenly and sublime. The lamb metaphor links the children to Christ and reminds the reader of Jesus’s special tenderness and care for children. As the children begin to sing in the third stanza, they are no longer just weak and mild; the strength of their combined voices raised toward God evokes something more powerful and puts them in direct contact with heaven. The simile for their song is first given as “a mighty wind” and then as “harmonious thunderings.” The beadles, under whose authority the children live, are eclipsed in their aged pallor by the internal radiance of the children. Thus the ‘guardians’ are beneath the children. The final line advises compassion for the poor. Blake’s basic aim in this poem is to emphasize the heavenliness and innocent or the children. The beginning of  Holy Thursday (I) is transformed into Holy Thursday II as:

“Is that trembling cry a song?   

Can it be a song of joy?

Holy Thursday II in contrast begins with a series of questions: how holy is the sight of children living in misery in a prosperous country? Might the children’s “cry,” as they sit assembled in St. Paul‘s Cathedral on Holy Thursday, really be a song? “Can it be a song of joy?” In the first stanza, we learn that whatever care these children receive is minimal and grudgingly bestowed. The “cold and usurous hand” that feeds them is motivated more by self-interest than by love and pity. Moreover, this “hand” metonymically represents not just the daily guardians of the orphans, but the city of London as a whole: the entire city has a civic responsibility to these most helpless members of their society, yet it delegates or denies this obligation. Here the children must participate in a public display of joy that poorly reflects their actual circumstances, but serves rather to reinforce the self-righteous complacency of those who are supposed to care for them. The song that had sounded so majestic in the Songs of Innocence shrivels, here, to a “trembling cry.” In the first poem, the parade of children found natural symbolization in London‘s mighty river. Here, however, the children and the natural world conceptually connect via a strikingly different set of images: the failing crops and sunless fields symbolize the wasting of a nation’s resources and the public’s neglect of the future. The thorns, which line their paths, link their suffering to that of Christ. They live in an ‘eternal winter’, where they experience neither physical comfort nor the warmth of love.

Holy Thursday I is meek and lenient in tone; but the poem calls upon the reader to be more critical than the speaker is: we are asked to contemplate the true meaning of Christian pity, and to contrast the institutionalized charity of the schools with the love of which God–and innocent children–are capable. Moreover, the visual picture given in the first two stanzas contains a number of unsettling aspects: the mention of the children’s clean faces suggests that they have been tidied up for this public occasion; that their usual state is quite different. The public display of love and charity conceals the cruelty to which impoverished children were often subjected. Moreover, the orderliness of the children’s march and the ominous “wands” (or rods) of the beadles suggest rigidity, regimentation, and violent authority rather than charity and love. Lastly, the tempestuousness of the children’s song, as the poem transitions from visual to aural imagery, carries a suggestion of divine vengeance as in these lines:

“Then cherish pity, lest you drive
an angel from your door.”

In the Innocence version, Blake described the public appearance of charity school children in St. Paul‘s Cathedral In “experienced” version, however, he critiques rather than praises the charity of the institutions responsible for hapless children. The speaker entertains questions about the children as victims of cruelty and injustice, some of which the earlier poem implied. The rhetorical technique of the poem is to pose a number of suspicious questions that receive indirect, yet quite censoriously toned answers as in:

“Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land”

The question may be asked which of the two “Holy Thursday” poems states the right attitude. According to John Beer, a famous critic the innocent poem displays greater insight, in spite of the greater worldly wisdom, and in spite of the superior moral interest, shown in the experienced poem. The innocent speaker, says this critic, sees more of the scene than the experienced one. The speaker in the experienced poem is so anxious to assert his moral ideas that the scene in St. Paul‘s becomes an excuse for a moral sermon rather than a situation he can give attention to. And John Beer concludes: “The innocent song ends on a positive note without preaching a sermon, while the experienced speaker preaches a sermon that is negative in tone, being full of moral anxiety but destructive of moral obligation.” With his “Holy Thursday” of Experience”, Blake clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of formalized religion and its claimed acts of charity. He exposes the established church’s self-congratulatory hymns as a sham that the sound of the children is only a trembling cry.

Auguries of Innocence by William Blake critical overview

In this poem Blake narrates multiple scenes that seem to have no connection between each other.The poem conveys several different things about the natural world where we live in. The poem is written with such great conciseness and precision, making it impossible not to empathize with all the protagonists and their inner struggle. In the first stanza, Blake says " To see a world in a grain of sand,  and a heaven in a wild flower" Blake is telling us two things. First, if we consider the world like a grain of sand, it tells us that the world is not as big as we think it is. All around the world, people tend to have the same problems and the same unresolved issues in their life. From my point of view, Blake is reminding us that at the end of the day we are not so different. The second verse on the other hand, contains a contradiction. How could there be heaven in a wild flower? Blake is telling us that things are usually not perfect in our natural world, and also that everyone does not have the same opinion about things.  Afterwards, Blake makes several animal images. In reality he is impersonating people through animals. The Robin redbreast symbolises a prisoner who is locked up. The dove house could be an image  of a country where there is a conflict, since "Shudders hell thro’ all its regions". The dog that is starving, could be an image of a beggar slowly becoming weaker, since no one is taking care of him anymore. The horse on the other hand, shows human cruelty. The horse could be a human slave, that " calls  to heaven for human blood". There are many other animal images, and they are all used to convey the same message: the downfall of the world, and all the suffering that comes into play. Blake was very religious, he wrote this poem to show how the natural world has changed overtime and how innocence has been lost in all living beings, and how we will all be 'judged" at the end of our life. The reason why this poem is so long, and is full of turn of events is because Blake tries to mimic living being's life. Full of challenges, ups and downs and difficulties. On line 53, Blake says that " A truth that's told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent" . Blake means that human beings tend to be selfish and insecure. If someone tells you something not because they want you to fix it, but just to point it out and feel better about themselves is worse then just telling a lie.

In my opinion, the most interesting part of the poem are the last verses. They are powerful and intense, and conclude the poem in a harsh yet strong way that leaves the reader lost in wonder. " We are led to believe a lie when we see not thro' the eye, which was born in a night to perish in a nigh," I personally think that this is the most beautiful verse of the poem.  When I first read it, I immediately though of dictators or even just a president. "We are led to believe a lie" meaning that if someone imposes, their way of thinking, and this person is in power, people will tend to think like him. The best example would be Hitler in World War two, when Germany lost World War one, the entire country was devastated. People did not believe in anything anymore, so when Hitler came to power imposing his racist ideology, Germany's population blindly followed him, "Led to believe a lie, when we see not thro' the eye". "Which was born in a night to perish in a night" is fascinating too, because it illustrates  how weak the ideologies really are. When Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy, everyone including my grandmother believed in him and thought of him as the "Savior of Italy".  When the fascism collapsed, almost everyone turned against him. His body, after being kicked and shot, was hung upside down in a gas station, and the body was then stoned by civilians.This example is to demonstrate, how an ideology that was acclaimed and applauded one day, could "perish in a night". The last verse " God appears and God is light (...) to those who dwell in realms of day" is used to illustrate the final judgment. Suffering throughout your existence is worth it, because you will be saved. "But does a human form display" illustrates the idea that God is always with us no matter what. He is always around, and his presence is in all of us.