Study Guide to the Rape of the Lock and Other Works by Alexander Pope

INTRODUCTION TO ALEXANDER POPE

Alexander Pope, whose father was a linendraper, was born in London on the 21st of May, 1688. His parents were Roman Catholic, and Pope himself practiced his faith to the end of his life despite the bitter anti-Catholic sentiments of 18th Century England. The poet was further handicapped in life by the fact that he was crippled at the age of twelve by a disease which left him a hunchback less than five feet tall. Often the victim of contempt because of his religion and mockery due to his appearance, he gradually developed a bitter attitude toward life which reveals itself in some of his biting literary attacks on personal enemies. He never married, but was deeply attached throughout his life to a certain Martha Blount, and for a time to a Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom he later attacked bitterly in print. It is said that when he openly expressed his affection for her, she laughed at him on account of his deformity. Denied entrance of Oxford and Cambridge Universities because he was a Catholic, Pope was largely self-educated. Through his own labors he gained an appreciation of the classics, essential in the cultivated circles of the age, and a profound knowledge of the craft of writing. In Pope’s age there were many strict rules which writers had to obey, and he mastered them more thoroughly and used them more skillfully than did any of his contemporaries. Principally due to his health and appearance, the events of his life are mainly literary ones, but he nevertheless led an active social life, and counted among his closest friends such eminent literary figures as the essayist Joseph Addison and the satirist Jonathan Swift. Yet he made more enemies than friends, and maintained fierce personal feuds which affected his writing and personality. His greatest and best known poem, The Rape of the Lock, was written when he was only twenty-four, and by his mid-thirties he was, rich and famous. He became financially independent due to his translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and this prevented his ever having to become a hack writer. His literary career can be divided into three periods, in which he wrote many types of poetry, from odes and pastorals to satires and philosophical poems. He died in 1744 and was buried at Twickenham, twelve miles from London.

HIS WRITINGS, FIRST PERIOD

The most important of Pope’s early works are his Pastorals, which were published in Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies in 1709. Pope claimed that he wrote them when he was sixteen years of age, but this was never proved. It should be noted that Pope often made claims like this to make himself appear to have been an outstandingly precocious child. His Essay on Criticism, which was published in 1711, was his real introduction to the literary circle of which Joseph Addison was the center. In 1712, two works were published, one his Messiah, in the periodical, Spectator and The Rape of the Lock, in a publication called Lintot’s Miscellanies. Of these two poems, the latter attracted immediate public attention and brought Pope a certain amount of acclaim. The Rape of the Lock was republished, with changes and additions, in 1714. In 1713 he produced a lyrical poem, his Ode for Music on St. Cecilia’s, Day, but it was not a success. His Windsor Forest, however, which was also published in 1713, received a better reception, particularly in the political party known as the Tories. This reception was favorable because of references Pope made in the poem to the Peace of Utrecht. Windsor Forest is also important for starting the long friendship between Pope and Swift. As a result of his writings during these early years, Pope for a time became a member of Addison’s group of friends, known as the little senate. He soon broke away from it, however, to join what was called the Scriblerus Club, a literary society which included such well-known contemporaries as Swift the satirist, and the poet John Gay. The two most important poems of this period, however, are his Essay on Criticism and The Rape of the Lock. At this point, a few general comments on these poems should be made:

1. The Essay on Criticism is the first poem of reasonable length that Pope published. It contains a remarkable number of lines which have passed into everyday speech as popular sayings. For fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and To err is human, to forgive divine are two good examples of such well known quotations. It is wrong to regard this poem as a text of 18th Century critical opinion, however. Most of its contents are ideas borrowed from ancient writers, and were well known in Pope’s time in any case. The poem’s real value lies in its assertion that literary criticism is an art form which should be a living organism. And according to Pope, the critic will put life into his work by following Nature and her standards. We will shortly discuss what Pope meant by Nature.

2. The Rape of the Lock, which we will examine in detail later, is a brilliant satire written in what is called a mock-heroic style reminiscent of classical epic poetry. A careful study of this poem not only gives the student a penetrating insight into the 18th Century method of writing, but also offers a satirical view of the tastes, manners, and morals of the fashionable world in Queen Anne’s reign. For poetical design and controlled proportions there was no contemporary poem to equal it. There is a dual satire in this poem, for Pope was ridiculing not only a trivial incident (the snipping of a girl’s lock of hair) but also the high-flown style and language of epic poetry itself.

SECOND PERIOD

The middle period of Pope’s creative life begins with the publication in 1715 of a translation of Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad. This was only the first volume, however, the work being completed in 1720. By 1726 Pope had also completed a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, and between them these two translations, made the poet rich, leaving him free to write what and when he wanted. In 1717 a collected edition of his works appeared, which is noted for the inclusion of two poems with love as their theme. This was unusual since, as we shall learn shortly, personal passions were not usually expressed in 18th Century poetry. In any case, these two poems were his Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and Eloisa to Abelard. The first is an elegy to a lady who had committed suicide because of a hopeless love affair, and the second is a longer poem expressing the emotional anguish of a lady who is in love, but renounces love of man for love of God. During this second period, Pope made his one and only venture into the field of drama. In 1717 he helped the poet Gay to write a stage comedy called Three Hours After Marriage, but it was not a success. In 1723 Pope issued his satire on Atticus, which was the name he gave to Joseph Addison, with whom he had quarreled. The fact that Addison had died in 1719 did not deter the poet from publishing his attack, which was rewritten and published again in 1735 under the title An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. In 1725 Pope’s edition of Shakespeare’s works appeared. It contained several mistakes in scholarship which were exposed by a man called Lewis Theobald. This man was therefore picked by Pope as the main victim of a satirical work in three books called the Dunciad. The first version of this poem was published in 1728, bringing us to the beginning of his third period. The most important works of his second period, however, are his translations of Homer, and two points should be noted regarding them:

1. From a financial point of view, his versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey were a resounding success, earning him about (L) 9,000 (equivalent to about $100,000 today). This meant that Pope was now independent of publishers’ demands and could spend the rest of his life comfortably in his country home at Twickenham. This triumph also meant that the poems had been most favorably received in literary circles. It must be remembered, however, that to meet 18th Century standards, a translation did not necessarily have to be accurate.

2. By classical epic standards, Pope’s work on Homer is inaccurate and does not do justice to the originals. His translations are more faithful to the current poetic mannerisms of the 18th Century than to the epic grandeur of Homer. The Greek poet wrote in a very simple and direct manner, while Pope concentrated on producing elegant epics written in the polished style of the day. Where Homer says simply, His father wept with him, Pope says that The father poured a social flood.

THIRD PERIOD

The beginning of Pope’s third and final creative period was marked, as we have seen, by the publication of the first version of the Dunciad in 1728. This was followed by three other editions in 1729, 1742 (called The New Dunciad), and 1743. In the completed Dunciad which had four volumes, the dramatist Colley Cibber replaced Theobald as the central figure being satirized. Between 1733 and 1734, Pope published Four Epistles of poetry, moral and philosophical in nature, which he called An Essay on Man. The poet added another epistle to this, and addressed it to Addison. During this last period, Pope published a collection of satires entitled Imitations of Horace, and the first of these appeared in 1733 under the title Satire I, which took the form of a dialogue. As was mentioned earlier, Pope and published his attack on Atticus (Addison) in 1723, which was later published in 1735, in this third period, as An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. The reason for Pope’s hatred for Addison, who had at one time been a friend of his, was the essayist’s sponsorship of a translation of Homer to rival Pope’s 1715 version of the Iliad. Although Addison died in 1719, Pope never forgave him, and continued the bitter attacks culminating in the 1735 poem. In the last years of his life, the poet occupied himself with the publication of his letters to his celebrated literary friends. Apparently in order to discredit a certain publisher called Curl, Pope employed very devious means of having his letters published by this man made public to make it appear as if this were done against the poet’s wishes. He then produced revised versions of the same letters to make Curl seem dishonest. This indicates the bitterness which had increased in Pope over the years, and which stayed with him until his death in 1744. Of the poems in this last period, his Essay on Man and Dunciad are the most important and therefore worthy of some comment:

1. Pope had a twofold purpose in writing his Essay on Man: to justify God’s ways to man, and to crystallize in poetic form some of the main ideas on man and society prevalent at that time. The poem contains such sayings as The proper study of mankind is man, and An honest man’s the noblest work of God, both of which illustrate not only the thinking of the day, but also the concise way in which Pope expressed such thoughts. It must be remembered,