mock epic

Question 1

what does pope say about ladies and epic heroes

Answer 1

the ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies; let an action never be so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance’

Question 2

why can rape of the lock not about female vanity (fred parker)

Answer 2

It is not Belinda herself but the heroi-comical poet who calls her a goddess, inverts her dressing table with the aura of a sacred ritual, and transforms the everyday into a thing of “awful beauty”. The “cosmetic powers” are intertwined with the power of poetry, so that the ‘purer blush’ and ‘keener lightnings’ achieved by make-up lift Belinda into the heroic world

Question 3

what is the effect of having Belinda as a protagonist?

Answer 3

by placing Belinda at the centre of his mock-heroic, pope brings out an equivalence ironic but also real, between her situation in her society and the position of the Homeric hero, whose glory lies in being recognised by those around him, and in being commemorated by the poet’

Question 4

other than Sarpedon’s speech to Glaucus, what does Clarissa’s speech echo?

Answer 4

passage of ovid where he writes: ‘the time will come your beauty must decay,/ when age shall furrow up the painted clay,/ and grief to see yourselves in your own glass,/ shall be another cause to spoil the face./ then, then, the power of virtue’s charms you’ll prove,/ and how good humour still may keep up love’

Question 5

quote on male violence/ civilised polite society (parker)

Answer 5

‘one… account of the Iliad would be that it is about (male) violence and the possibility of accommodating it. One comparably simple description of rape would be that it develops that agenda: it explores whether, and at what costs, the violence in Homer can be accommodated in the more civilised forms of polite society, of which the mode of mock heroic is itself an example. The transposition of what are in Homer typically male concerns into the female sphere further sharpens that question’

Question 6

parker on the final battle

Answer 6

• The angry women prosecute what is, in some sense, a real attack […]or avenge themselves for it
• man, abetted by the poet, meet these attack with a series of conceits and double meanings, playing on the idea of killing and dying as erotic acts, interpreting the woman’s anger as a form of (not unwelcome) sexual prepositioning
• Homeric violence is here partly transformed into something more civilised or playful, a kind of courtship ritual: - but not without a strong residual suggestion that courtship may itself be a form of violence or intended violence. One kind of rape stands in for another.’

Question 7

Weinbrot on the epic vs. pope’s society

Answer 7

‘the poem… sets Pope’s fragile culture against the superior culture evoked in his parody of epic devices. Pope does not taint Homer’s epic, but the modern pseudo-heroes’

Question 8

Ian Jack on the genre of mock epic

Answer 8

in a mock epic a dignified genre is turned to witty use withiut being cheapened in any way

Question 9

wasserman on the problem of Pope’s mock epic

Answer 9

pope’s lines do violence to Homer’s passages, adulterate them, because the weak and sordid modern culture adulterates the simple purity of the Homeric life’

Question 10

what was the critical reception of Homer in the 17th century

Answer 10

Hostility to Homer had been growing throughout the seventeenth century, especially in France’

Question 11

which 4 areas of weakness did critics find with homer?

Answer 11

• plot
• decorum
• the nastiness of the gods
• the brutality of the heros

Question 12

criticism of achilles

Answer 12

achilles was not so much as rational but brutal

-brutality was a vice that aristotle saw as being directly opposite to heroic virtue

Question 13

examples of the characters in RofL action’s as adaptations of epic hero’s actions

Answer 13

• belinda’s triumph after her victory in ombre

- The baron refusing to return the Lock

Question 14

pope on Homer

Answer 14

that Homer’s plot is ‘a confused Heap of Beauties”, his love of slaughter is offensive, and his use of metaphors indecent… he raised the characters of his men up to gods, so he sunk those of gods down to men’

Question 15

how is Belinda similar to a warrior

Answer 15

• Belinda is in danger of a parallel social death, degradation and dishonour
• like other warriors she courts the death she hopes to avoid

Question 16

how can the parallels between Belinda and warriors be linked to Sarpedon and Glaucus’s speech

Answer 16

• battles cause death, like beauty causes death
• S+G in their speech agree that it is better to die honourably (in battle) than boringly
• unlike what Clarissa says, it is better to be beautiful, court men and be seductive, even if this causes death (deflowering)

Question 17

cunnigham on popes intertexuality

Answer 17

Pope adopts or adapts whole lines and phrases from the translators, sometimes with minimal verbal alterations, but always, of course, with the sea-change caused by the difference of context

Question 18

link between epic values and the characters

Answer 18

the more character in The Rape of the Lock embrace epic values and conventions, the less pleasant they are

Question 19

weinbrot on the card game (2)

Answer 19

• the card game also is a mating dance and a ritualised expression of potentially violent sexual energy
• the card game takes the form of a miniature epic battle