‘From Pope’s perspective as satirist’, writes Michael jordan Seidel, ‘London is stuffed with the body of dunces and awash in printer’s ink’, striking upon the early 18th century’s proliferation of print traditions and its larger implications that Pope was so enthusiastic about. This expansion manifests by itself in multifarious ways in the satires The Rape in the Lock [1712] and The Dunciad [published and revised in 1728, 1729, 1742 and 1743] through which material traditions saturates and overwhelms both equally poems. Both equally texts likewise share their roots in Homer’s Iliad, a choice which in turn elides in some ways with the saturation of material lifestyle, as the ‘epic’ simply by its incredibly nature is involved with grandeur, prizes, and trophies. However some critics have perceived Pope’s satires while mocking performs, outrageous copie of sincere matter, from this essay Let me discuss his use of Homer’s work as a framing and comparative device to poker fun at his modern material culture as small and illusory, during a great age which has been just beginning to develop self-awareness about the legacy and place in history and also the world, in literary discussions about newness vs returning to classical antiquity, and the growing perception of England like a mercantile capital of the world. Worries between the illusory and real, and worldly and household weave through Pope’s �pigramme, centred across the chaos with the material community, which creates a central goal for Pope’s attacks in the contemporary world, in turn mocking those who [sometimes quite literally] buy extremely into its phony sincerity or perhaps promises.
Pope’s Rape of the Lock is often referred to as a ‘mock epic’, or, ‘satiric burlesque’ by Seidel for example , whom describes the mode as ‘a substitute literary plan, a way of rearticulating an important part of any culture’s reassessment of its fictional inheritance’. For writers in Pope’s time, this notion of ‘inheritance’ was concentrated largely within the classical copy writers of the Augustan period, Homer being to whom Pope had taken inspiration via for his satire. Nevertheless , to state this, or to packaging Pope’s operate ‘mock’ epic or ‘burlesque’ implies that the epic by itself is the locus of his satire, when in fact , much the opposite is true. In spite of promises that his works ‘do violence to Homer’s pathways, adulterate them’, it seems crystal clear from Pope’s corpus of, including a translation of Homer’s Iliad, strongly implies his reverence to get the old poet:
‘He was a Father of Learning, a Spirit capable of ranging over the whole Creation with an intellectual Perspective, shining by itself […] leaving behind him a piece adorn’d with all the Knowledge of his own Time […] A Work which shall always stand at the top of the sublime Character'[. ]
Pope’s admiration with the poet’s work is clear in his depiction of it as standing ‘at the very best of the sublime character’, and much from mockery, this passing illuminates Pope’s desire to emulate Homer’s role. He interprets him as ‘capable of ranging within the whole creation’, producing a ‘work adorn’d while using knowledge of his own time’, an placement Pope endeavors to achieve, as Seidel describes the Dunciad as ‘a monumental instance of how the scope of satire expands in the early eighteenth 100 years to absorb almost everything modern society can display and produce’. By using on this same role and absorbing the epic conferences he so admires, the satirical nature of Pope’s works comes from the improved scope of what ‘society can display and produce’, making his individual world disappointing in comparison to regarding the epic. The notion of ‘prizes’ or ‘trophies’ happen to be motivations in both The Dunciad and The Afeitado of the Fasten for example , but whilst the Trojan war is fought over Sue, the woman valued enough to ‘launch 1000 ships’, the ‘prize’ of concern in The Rape of the Fasten seems hardly a quarter from the worth, as merely a secure of curly hair:
‘This Nymph, to the damage of human beings, /Nourish’d two Locks, which usually graceful hung behind'[. ][Canto II, 19-20]’
The two of these lines work in a way just like the chronology of Pope’s job following Homer’s, the ‘destruction of mankind’ on line 19 sets up anticipation something bad or disastrous, yet they can be met for the following line with a picture of two locks of hair, hanging benignly and ‘gracefully’ in the Lady’s mind. This is exemplary of the classical hyperbole and sense of inflation Pope proliferates throughout the poem when he exposes of great importance to those inside the poem to get hysterical and excessive. Through this same method, Pope performs on stresses of his age of its legacy in history, by replacing a great warrior wonderful weapon with Belinda and her bodkin:
‘Now meet thy fate, incens’d Belinda cry’d, /And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. /(The same, his ancient personage to deck, /Her superb great grandsire wore about his throat, /[…]Form’d a vast buckle for his widow’s gown […] Then in a bodkin grac’d her single mother’s hairs/Which lengthy she wore, and now Belinda wears’. [Canto Versus, 88-90, 80, 95-6]
Pope styles a history for the bodkin akin to that of individuals included in time-honored epics with reference to the warrior’s weapons. Once again, Pope in this article employs affectation, scaling down a mighty tool to a ‘bodkin’, a kind of filling device which is inefficient to inflict any ‘deadly’ blows. Much like Sue reduced to a lock of hair, the bodkin provokes a feeling of reduction in reflection upon the classical impressive, and more significantly, an filled with air perception of petty material goods since important or powerful. Even though the tools objects related to Homer’s players leave them a legacy of heroism, P�re expresses ridicule for the frivolous subject[s] Belinda and her recent ancestors will be remembered simply by, in every case here getting merely decorative, worn ‘about [a] neck’ or gracing ‘her single mother’s hairs’. Satirising a real incident, Pope fashions a point of view around the sealed, civilized world his character types inhabit, wonderful Homeric body both conveys the pettiness of their discussion, but also mocks the habit of sensationalising and placing extreme faith in objects of little actual importance.
Whilst I have analysed specific objects of ridicule in Pope’s �pigramme, what have not yet been addressed is a mass growth of material issues in his job. The Rape of the Locking mechanism is ornate, decorated with objects, exemplified by Belinda’s toilet which in turn strikes parallels to a virtuosi’s curiosity collection:
‘Here data of hooks extend all their shining rows, /Puffs, Powders, Patches, Holy bible, Billet-doux. /Now awful Splendor puts on every its arms'[Canto I actually, 137-142]
In an practically sacrilegious trend, the ‘bible’ is disorderly carelessly amidst Belinda’s ‘puffs’ and ‘powders’ as though the same in benefit. It is below then that an opposition occurs, where we come across that not just are petty objects overpriced to fake values, nevertheless that points of importance happen to be neglected. Inside the Dunciad, this kind of complaint is a centre of Pope’s attack upon the proliferation of print culture, which when he saw that, brought a ‘new wind of commercial and material purchase in England’ as producing became seriously involved with economic capital. Through this mock legendary, he once again appropriates part of Homer’s work in his brave couplet form, but likewise structurally, as we see the goddess of Dullness at ‘war’ with cause, and dark at warfare with lumination. Much much like Rape in the Lock, the framing device poses The Dunciad’s ‘war’ as struggled for sale ends. P�re mourns to get a lost chastity in writing as figures and tropes from Homer’s epic multiply, and turn into warped or excessive. Homer’s Hera, for instance , who is identified as cow-eyed, becomes an unsightly ‘Juno of majestic size, /With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes'[Book II, 155-6] in Pope’s operate. We see two different kinds of ‘excess’ arise involving the Rape in the Lock and The Dunciad, exactly where in the previous, Homer’s brave style put on the argument makes it seem excessive and overblown, employing this to model the treatment of petty commodities while prized, life goods, and in the latter, elements of Homer’s job are immediately magnified and multiplied to ugly amounts in order to condemn those freelance writers he believes to be muddying the oceans of the literary sphere. With all the rise of print tradition and the lapsing of the licencing act in 1695, Pope sees the literary sphere as overcome with negative writers and bad job, looking just for money, as opposed to the purity he finds in Homer’s operate:
‘Now thousand tongues are heard in a single loud din: /The Monkey-mimics rush discordant in, /Twas chatt’ring, grinning, mouthing, jabb’ring all, And Noise and Norton, Brangling and Brevall, Dennis and Dissonance, and captious Art'[. ][Book II, 227-231]
The monotonous turns are to be waded through here, as the lines move swiftly from ‘t’ sounds through to ‘n’s and ‘b’s, making it a mouthful to read, especially out loud. About this point of readerly difficulty in the composition, Aubrey D. Williams supposes that ‘so weighty, and occasionally, so unassimilated are the components of history and personality the fact that poem’s organising principles and central themes at times have difficulty through the mass of details painfully, in the event at all’. Whilst this comes across being a criticism of Pope’s design, this misunderstandings or have difficulty can be usefully considered as strategic stylistic surplus, utilized as part of the poem’s emphasis on the literary world’s overcrowding, mirroring how he interprets his very own literary community to be a chattering ‘mass’ of bad function. Pope recognizes a ‘thousand tongues’ since negative, strongly advocating Dryden’s succinct rule: ‘Learn to create well, or not to write at all’, and suggesting that pertaining to an age group to be appreciated, it is better to obtain one skilled ‘tongue’ like Homer’s producing great work rather than a ‘thousand’ creating work of poor quality, as he saw in the contemporary globe ‘ “little hope of maintaining the principles and requirements or materials, largely produced from the classic past” ‘[. ]
In looking at the two satires’ depictions of excess, Barbara Benedict’s idea of ‘the material replac[ing] the moral’ seems especially fitting, because of it was not simply that the ‘trophies’ or appreciated objects of Homer’s Iliad had degenerated into meager locks of hair, but also that the fabric elements of issues were pored over exceedingly, negating moral good or satisfaction. For instance , Pope levels his attack at one point in The Dunciad in Sir Jones Handmer, who have edited Shakespeare into exceedingly ornate versions:
‘The decent Knight retir’d with dry rage, / “What! not any respect, he cry’d, pertaining to Shakespear’s page/But (happy pertaining to him as the times gone then)/Appear’d Apollo’s May’r and Aldermen, /On whom 300 gold-capt youths await, /To lug the pond’rous volume level off in state’. [Book 4, 113-118]
With ‘sober’ rage, Friend Thomas laments a lack of respect for Shakespeare’s ‘page’, or writing, however at the appearance of a 100 ‘gold-capt youths’ he is pacified in an instant, because all meaningful outrage disappears in the face of materials wealth. This is certainly of course the crux of Pope’s satire in Dunciad, as he depicts both freelance writers and the booksellers who [quite literally] pursuit them as mercenary and greedy, neglecting the meaningful duty to make good literary works in favour of materials gain. In fact , the feeling of being overcome simply by bad authors and literary works goes while far to suggest that words and phrases or works have an actual weight, with ‘show’rs of Sermons, Character types, Essays, / In circling fleeces lighten all the techniques: /So atmosphere replenish’d via some swamp, fen, marsh, quagmire below, /Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow’. [Book II, 361-364] Belinda’s lock of beautiful hair is the principal material desire of The Rape of the Lock, and petty collections happen to be amplified to heroic status, whilst poets and booksellers of The Dunciad dedicate themselves to churning out hack literature and amassing material wealth. But all of these things are exposed by simply Pope as excessive in nature, and ultimately, illusory gains. Inside the Rape, Belinda’s lock literally disappears: ‘The Lock, obtain’d with sense of guilt, and kept with pain/In ev’ry place is desired, but sought in vain'[Canto Sixth is v, 109-110] and the fight comes to nothing, whilst inside the Dunciad, freelance writers and booksellers compete for prizes just like ‘a this halloween of lead'[Book II, 281], in addition to their ‘dull’ literary uses, all end up being the same, or as P�re puts it: ‘ “Reader! These also are not really real persons … Thou may’st depend on it not any such experts ever existed: all phantoms’. Their work amasses to so little the fact that authors and the work may well literally be conceived of as worthless, or translucent.
Excessive, especially in the case of material things, is pervasive in Pope’s satire, and it is Homer’s Impressive that provides the springboard that Pope mocks both the superfluous concerns given to petty issues, as well as the excessive propagation of hack books by individuals writers regarded not qualified to write. In writing his satires, Pope received directly from the contemporary universe he identified in order to control, and control or change it out, as is usually the intention of satire generally. By means of his own ‘excess’, whether that is certainly in brave form set over petty subjects, words and personas accumulating physical weight and presence, and also the distorting of classical tropes and statistics, Pope endeavors to include that ‘excess’ he so despises in the own globe. It seems absolutely nothing characterizes this kind of better than his constant re-revisions of The Dunciad in particular, because over the years the actual people he satirizes transform and enhance, and as Rosenblum notes, in the event somebody built ‘a appropriate act of submission to Pope’ they could be ‘taken out of the poem’. Pope is made up of his real-life subjects within just his satires to display their very own foolishness, and thus hypothetically, until they make a ‘suitable work of submission’ to show their innocence, they continue to be the subjects of ridicule for their investment in petty, meaningless masses of points.
