Pope is one of the major figures of the Restoration, and his poem “The Rape of the Lock” will almost certainly be on your exam. Apart from “The Rape of the Lock,” Pope has a number of works that have a high probability of showing up.
Note that Pope wrote almost exclusively in heroic couplets, like many Restoration poets. Noting that a poem is written in heroic couplets is a good step toward identifying a work of Pope’s
“The Rape of the Lock”
“The Rape of the Lock” is not a terribly long poem, and given that it is very likely to appear on your exam, take the time to read it.
“The Rape of the Lock” is a mock-heroic poem, first published in 1712 in two cantos, and then reissued in 1714 in a much-expanded 5-canto version.
The poem is based on an incident involving friends of Pope. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre were both from aristocratic Catholic families at a time, in England, when Catholicism was legally proscribed. Petre, wooing Arabella, had cut off a lock of her hair without permission, and the resulting argument had created a breach between the two families. Pope wrote the poem at the request of a friend in order to “laugh the two together”. Pope refigures Arabella as Belinda and introduces an entire system of “sylphs”, or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodic version of the gods and goddess of conventional epic. Pope satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods.
To Mrs. Arabella Fermor
Madam,
It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since I dedicate it to You. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only to divert a few young Ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex’s little unguarded follies, but at their own. But as it was communicated with the air of a Secret, it soon found its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offer’d to a Bookseller, you had the good-nature for my sake to consent to the publication of one more correct: This I was forc’d to, before I had executed half my design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to compleat it.
The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the Critics, to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons are made to act in a Poem: For the ancient Poets are in one respect like many modern Ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These Machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits.
I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a Lady; but’t is so much the concern of a Poet to have his works understood, and particularly by your Sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms.
The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French book call’d Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its title and size is so like a Novel, that many of the Fair Sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these Gentlemen, the four Elements are inhabited by Spirits, which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The Gnomes or Dæmons of Earth delight in mischief; but the Sylphs whose habitation is in the Air, are the best-condition’d creatures imaginable. For they say, any mortals may enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a condition very easy to all true Adepts, an inviolate preservation of Chastity.
As to the following Canto’s, all the passages of them are as fabulous, as the Vision at the beginning, or the Transformation at the end; (except the loss of your Hair, which I always mention with reverence). The Human persons are as fictitious as the airy ones; and the character of Belinda, as it is now manag’d, resembles you in nothing but in Beauty.
If this Poem had as many Graces as there are in your Person, or in your Mind, yet I could never hope it should pass thro’ the world half so Uncensur’d as You have done. But let its fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given me this occasion of assuring you that I am, with the truest esteem, Madam,
Your most obedient, Humble Servant,
A. Pope
Canto I
What dire offence from am’rous causes springs, Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel Sol thro’ white curtains shot a tim’rous ray, “Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face, Oft, when the world imagine women stray, Of these am I, who thy protection claim, He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long, And now, unveil’d, the Toilet stands display’d, |
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Canto II
Not with more glories, in th’ etherial plain, This Nymph, to the destruction of mankind, Th’ advent’rous Baron the bright locks admir’d; For this, ere Phœbus rose, he had implor’d But now secure the painted vessel glides, Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear! Our humbler province is to tend the Fair, This day, black Omens threat the brightest Fair, To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note, Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend; |
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Canto III
Close by those meads, for ever crown’d with flow’rs, Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, Mean while, declining from the noon of day, Soon as she spreads her hand, th’ aërial guard The skilful Nymph reviews her force with care: Now move to war her sable Matadores, Thus far both armies to Belinda yield; The Baron now his Diamonds pours apace; The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily arts, Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate, For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown’d, But when to mischief mortals bend their will, The Peer now spreads the glitt’ring Forfex wide, Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes, Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine |
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Canto IV
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress’d, For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrew Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome, Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place, A constant Vapour o’er the palace flies; Unnumber’d throngs on every side are seen, Safe past the Gnome thro’ this fantastic band, The Goddess with a discontented air Sunk in Thalestris’ arms the nymph he found, She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs, “It grieves me much” (reply’d the Peer again) But Umbriel, hateful Gnome! forbears not so; |
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Canto V
She said: the pitying audience melt in tears. “Say why are Beauties prais’d and honour’d most, So spoke the Dame, but no applause ensu’d; So when bold Homer makes the Gods engage, Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce’s height While thro’ the press enrag’d Thalestris flies, When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down, Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air, See, fierce Belinda on the Baron flies, Now meet thy fate, incens’d Belinda cry’d, “Boast not my fall” (he cry’d) “insulting foe! “Restore the Lock!” she cries; and all around Some thought it mounted to the Lunar sphere, But trust the Muse — she saw it upward rise, This the Beau monde shall from the Mall survey, |
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Pope used epic battle imagery to describe a small pair of ladies’ scissors, hence satirizing the ridiculous nature of the whole situation. The useless and transient nature of the sylphs is seen here. One, cut in half by the “fatal engine” is unharmed.
*“Essay on Criticism”
The poem is the nearest thing in eighteenth-century, English writing to what might be called a neo-classical manifesto, although it is never as categorically expounded as the term implies. It comes closer, perhaps, to being a handbook, or guide, to the critic’s and poet’s art, very much in the style of Horace’s Ars Poetica, or, to take the English models with which the young Pope was especially familiar, the Earl of Roscommon’s translation of Horace, The Art Of Poetry, (1680), and John Sheffield’s (the Duke of Buckingham’s) Essay On Poetry, (1682). It is accordingly of great value to us today in understanding what Pope and many of his contemporaries saw as the main functions and justifications of criticism in early, eighteenth-century England.
The poem is articulated through a more consciously epigrammatic style than anything found elsewhere in Pope’s poetry. It is built upon a series of maxims, or pithy apothegms, such as “To Err is Humane; to forgive, Divine,” (525), or “For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.” (625). Pope’s ability to sum up an idea tersely and memorably in a phrase, line, or couplet, of packed, imaginative clarity is a hallmark of An Essay on Criticism. Few other poems in the language contain so many formulations that have gone on to achieve an independent, proverbial existence in our culture. The polished couplets encapsulate points that reverberate in the manner of conversational repartee.
“Essay on Man”
“The Essay on Man” is a philosophical poem, written, characteristically, in heroic couplets, and published between 1732 and 1734. Pope intended it as the centerpiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form: it is in fact a fragment of a larger work which Pope planned but did not live to complete. It is an attempt to justify, as Milton had attempted to vindicate, the ways of God to Man, and a warning that man himself is not, as, in his pride, he seems to believe, the center of all things. Though not explicitly Christian, the Essay makes the implicit assumption that man is fallen and unregenerate, and that he must seek his own salvation.
The “Essay” consists of four epistles, addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, and derived, to some extent, from some of Bolingbroke’s own fragmentary philosophical writings, as well as from ideas expressed by the deistic third Earl of Shaftsbury. Pope sets out to demonstrate that no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable, and disturbingly full of evil the Universe may appear to be, it does function in a rational fashion, according to natural laws; and is, in fact, considered as a whole, a perfect work of God. It appears imperfect to us only because our perceptions are limited by our feeble moral and intellectual capacity. His conclusion is that we must learn to accept our position in the Great Chain of Being–a “middle state,” below that of the angels but above that of the beasts–in which we can, at least potentially, lead happy and virtuous lives.
The Dunciad
The Dunciad expresses Pope’s deep dismay concerning the feared loss of Britain’s literary, cultural and ethical inheritance. Pope takes this idea, of the personified goddess of Dulness being at war with reason, darkness at war with light, and extends it to a full Aeneid parody. His poem celebrates a war, rather than a mere victory, and a process of ignorance, and Pope picks as his champion of all things insipid Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber. (Theobald was Pope’s nemesis in editing Shakespeare. Cibber was Pope’s poetic nemesis who because laureate over Pope.)
The poem was loosely modelled on Dryden’s MacFlecknoe, but where Dryden’s poem was a lampoon of 217 lines attacking a single person, Thomas Shadwell, Pope’s was a more fully developed satirical anti-epic, attacking all those who had slandered him over many years, in a poem more than four times the length.
“Eloisa to Abelard”
It is an Ovidian heroic epistle inspired by the 12th century story of Eloisa’s (Heloise’s) illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal vengeance her family exacts when they castrate him, not realizing that the lovers had married.
It is from this poem that the title for the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes.
“To a Lady”
Although the target of the satire appears at first to be aristocratic and wealthy women, the venom that Pope expends upon them clearly spreads to encompass women as a sex. For readers today Pope’s text, like Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, presents serious problems of interpretation. Whereas in his other satires Pope targets either particular vices, or particular individuals, in An Epistle To A Lady he attacks the entire female sex. Paradoxically his misogyny weakens rather than strengthens his satire.
The “Lady” to whom it is addressed, and whom it praises so glowingly at the end, was Pope’s closest female friend, Martha Blount
Epistle II begins:
NOTHING so true as what you once let fall,
“Most Women have no Characters at all.”
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish’d by black, brown, or fair.