Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock | POEM ANALYSIS | Mock-Epic Genre, Scale, Antithesis, & Zeugma

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK by ALEXANDER POPE | Literature Analysis | Close reading of Alexander Pope’s tour de force mock-epic poem The Rape of the Lock, considering how Alexander Pope plays with genre, & confuses microscopic and macroscopic scale, particularly through grammatical techniques of antithesis and zeugma (of which Pope was a brilliant technician).

PASSAGES
This day black omens threat the brightest fair
That e’er deserv’d a watchful spirit’s care
Some dire disaster or by force or slight
But what or where the fates have wrapt in night
Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw
Or stain her honour or her new brocade
Forget her pray’rs or miss a masquerade
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball
Or whether Heav’n has doom’d that Shock must fall
Here thou great Anna whom three realms obey
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea
Or wedg’d whole Ages in a Bodkin’s Eye
Tho stiff with Hoops and arm’d with Ribs of Whale
Here files of pins extend their shining rows
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms
Now had the Grecians snatched a short repast
And buckled on their shining arms with haste
And Particolour'd Troops a shining Train
Draw forth to Combat on the Velvet Plain
Just then Clarissa drew with tempting Grace
A two-edg’d Weapon from her shining Case
Restore the lock she cries and all around
Restore the lock the vaulted roofs rebound
Now meet thy fate incens’d Belinda cried
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side
A sudden star it shot through liquid air
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair
Then cease bright nymph to mourn thy ravish’d hair
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere
And ’midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name