The Rape of the Lock

The traditional epic was an extravagant tale, revolving around the ideal and mighty hero and his quest, always extending beyond the ordinary confinements of society. Alexander Pope used the very structure of the formal and majestic epic in his The Rape of the Lock, to underscore the ridiculousness of his own society and their trivial practices and beliefs. In following the epic form, inventing his own divine machinery, using a learned and stiff diction Pope …

…of it. In The Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope links every element of the contemporary world with a scene or image of the classical epic tradition, trivializing the heart of contemporary society, its vanity. Pope further accents that the insignificant day to day operations of the people in the world around him hold no light to the subject matter of epic tales, the obsession with vanity has deterred all potential at significance and importance.