![Arabella Fermor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Arabella_Fermor.jpg)
''The Rape of the Lock'' is a
mock-heroic
Mock-heroic, mock-epic or heroi-comic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature. Typically, mock-heroic works either put a fool in the role of the hero or exaggerate the heroic ...
narrative poem
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be s ...
written by
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
. One of the most commonly cited examples of
high burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. , it was first published anonymously in Lintot's ''Miscellaneous Poems and Translations'' (May 1712) in two
canto
The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry.
Etymology and equivalent terms
The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...
s (334 lines); a revised edition "Written by Mr. Pope" followed in March 1714 as a five-canto version (794 lines) accompanied by six engravings. Pope boasted that this sold more than three thousand copies in its first four days. The final form of the poem appeared in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem was much translated and contributed to the growing popularity of mock-heroic in Europe.
Description
The poem of ''The Rape of the Lock''
satirises a minor incident of life, by comparing it to the
epic world of the gods, and is based on an event recounted to Alexander Pope by his friend
John Caryll.
Arabella Fermor and her suitor,
Lord Petre, were each a member of aristocratic
recusant
Recusancy (from la, recusare, translation=to refuse) was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation.
The 1558 Recusancy Acts passed in the reign ...
Catholic families, at a time in England when, under such laws as the
Test Act
The Test Acts were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and nonconformists. The underlying principle was that only people taking communion in t ...
, all denominations except
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...
suffered legal restrictions and penalties. (For example, Petre, being a Catholic, could not take the place in the
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
that would otherwise have been rightfully his.) Petre had cut off a
lock of Arabella's hair without permission, and the consequent argument had created a breach between the two families. The poem's title does not refer to the extreme of
sexual rape, but to an earlier definition of the word derived from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''rapere'' (supine stem ''raptum''), "to snatch, to grab, to carry off"
[Corinne J. Saunders, ''Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England'', Boydell & Brewer, 2001, p. 20.][Keith Burgess-Jackson, ''A Most Detestable Crime: New Philosophical Essays on Rape'', Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 16.]—in this case, the theft and carrying away of a lock of hair. In terms of the sensibilities of the age, however, even this non-consensual personal invasion might be interpreted as bringing dishonour.
Pope, also a Catholic, wrote the poem at the request of friends in an attempt to "comically merge the two" worlds, the heroic with the social. He utilised the character Belinda to represent Arabella and introduced an entire system of "
sylph
A sylph (also called sylphid) is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have be ...
s", or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodised version of the gods and goddesses of conventional epic. Pope derived his sylphs from the 17th-century French Rosicrucian novel ''
Comte de Gabalis
''Comte de Gabalis'' is a 17th-century French text by Abbé Nicolas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon de Villars (1635–1673). The titular "Comte de Gabalis" ("Count of Cabala") is an occultist who explains the mysteries of the world to the author. It f ...
''.
Pope, writing pseudonymously as Esdras Barnivelt, also published ''A Key to the Lock'' in 1714 as a humorous warning against taking the poem too seriously.
![RapeLock9New Star](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/RapeLock9New_Star.jpeg)
Pope's poem uses the traditional high stature of classical epics to emphasise the triviality of the incident. The abduction of
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy, Helen, Helena, (Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη ''Helénē'', ) also known as beautiful Helen, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believe ...
becomes here the theft of a lock of hair; the gods become minute sylphs; the description of
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's ''Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, k ...
' shield becomes an
excursus on one of Belinda's petticoats. He also uses the epic style of invocations, lamentations, exclamations and similes, and in some cases adds
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...
to imitation by following the framework of actual speeches in Homer's ''
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
''. Although the poem is humorous at times, Pope keeps a sense that beauty is fragile, and emphasizes that the loss of a lock of hair touches Belinda deeply.
The humour of the poem comes from the
storm in a teacup being couched within the elaborate, formal verbal structure of an epic poem. It is a satire on contemporary society which showcases the lifestyle led by some people of that age. Pope arguably satirises it from within rather than looking down judgmentally on the characters. Belinda's legitimate rage is thus alleviated and tempered by her good humour, as directed by the character Clarissa.
Dedicatory letter
Pope added to the second edition the following dedicatory letter to Mrs. Arabella Fermor:
Summary
![Lockenraub Werner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Lockenraub_Werner.jpg)
In the beginning of this mock-epic, Pope declares that a "dire offence" (Canto 1 line 1) has been committed. A lord has assaulted a "gentle belle" (line 8), causing her to reject him. He then proceeds to tell the story of this offence.
While Belinda is still asleep, her guardian
Sylph
A sylph (also called sylphid) is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have be ...
Ariel forewarns her that "some dread event impends". Belinda then awakes and gets ready for the day with the help of her maid, Betty. The Sylphs, though unseen, also contribute: "These set the head, and those divide the hair, some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown" (146–147). Here Pope also describes Belinda's two locks of hair "which graceful hung behind". The Baron, one of Belinda's suitors, greatly admires these locks and conspires to steal one. Building an altar, he places on it "all the trophies of his former loves" (line 40), sets them on fire and fervently prays "soon to obtain, and long possess" (line 44) the lock.
Ariel, disturbed by the impending event although not knowing what it will be, summons many sylphs to her and instructs them to guard Belinda from anything that may befall her, whether she "forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade, Or lost her heart, or necklace, at a ball" (line 108–109). So protected, Belinda arrives at
Hampton Court
Hampton Court Palace is a Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. The building of the palace began in 1514 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the chief ...
and is invited to play a game of
ombre
Ombre (, pronounced "omber") or l'Hombre is a fast-moving seventeenth-century trick-taking card game for three players and "the most successful card game ever invented."
Its history began in Spain around the end of the 16th century as a four-pe ...
.
The conspiring Baron acquires a pair of scissors and tries to snip off one of her locks, but he is prevented by the watchful Sylphs. This happens three times, but in the end the Baron succeeds (also cutting a Sylph in two although Pope reassures us, parodying a passage in ''
Paradise Lost
''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse (poetry), verse. A second edition fo ...
'', that "airy substance soon unites again"
ine 152. When Belinda discovers her lock is gone, she falls into a tantrum, while the Baron celebrates his victory.
A gnome named Umbriel now journeys to the Cave of Spleen and from the Queen receives a bag of "sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues" (canto 4 line 84) and a vial filled "with fainting fears, soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears" (line 85–86) and brings them to Belinda. Finding her dejected in the arms of the woman Thalestris, Umbriel pours the contents over them both.
Many people, moved by Belinda's grief, demand the lock back, but the Baron is unrepentant and refuses. Clarissa admonishes them to keep their good humour, but they will not listen and instead a battle ensues with glares, songs and wits as weapons. Belinda fights with the Baron and throws snuff up his nose to subdue him. When she demands that he restore the lock, however, it is nowhere to be found. It has been made a constellation and is destined to outlast the contestants.
The Rape of the Bucket
Although
John Ozell
John Ozell (died 15 October 1743) was an English translator and accountant who became an adversary to Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
He moved to London from the country at around the age of twenty and entered an accounting firm, where he was s ...
and Pope belonged to different political factions and later exchanged bitter insults, the coincidence of Ozell's translation of a pioneering Italian mock-heroic poem, at about the same time as the appearance of ''The Rape of the Lock'', led to the claim that it might have served as the model for Pope's poem. Pope's original two-canto version had been published anonymously in 1712. Ozell's translation of the first two cantos of the 17th-century ''
La secchia rapita
''La Secchia Rapita'' (The kidnapped bucket) is a mock-heroic epic poem by Alessandro Tassoni, first published in 1622. Later successful mock-heroic works in French and English were written on the same plan.
Background
The invention of the heroi- ...
'' was published the following year with the long title ''The Trophy Bucket: An heroi-comical poem. The first of the kind. Made English from the original Italian of
Tassoni''. But in consequence of the great success of Pope's expanded five-canto version of ''The Rape of the Lock'' in 1714, this time under his own name, Ozell's publisher
Edmund Curll
Edmund Curll (''c.'' 1675 – 11 December 1747) was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealt ...
seized the opportunity to profit from its popularity by retitling his translation ''The Rape of the Bucket'' in a 1715 "second edition".
That Tassoni's ''poema eroicomico'' was the model for
Boileau's ''Le Lutrin'' (The Lectern, 1674–83) is generally acknowledged. Both deflate an epic struggle to the size of a petty domestic squabble, but where Tassoni starts with an actual war and gives it an ignoble cause, Boileau begins with the trifling cause and compares it humorously with a Classical conflict. Narration of "What mighty contests rise from trivial things" is also Pope's method in ''The Rape of the Lock'', and Boileau's work has been seen in its turn as Pope's model. However, the coincidence of the appearance of Ozell's translation of Boileau's original model at the same time as ''The Rape of the Lock'' led to the perception of a more direct connection between Pope's poem and Tassoni's, only strengthened by Curll's opportunistic retitling of Ozell's translation. It is an impression that remains to this day.
Introducing his 1825 translation of the whole of Tassoni's ''The Rape of the Bucket'',
James Atkinson compared the three mock-heroic poems, the Italian, the French and the English. But "there is little of similarity among them," in his view, their humour is distinct. "The ''Secchia Rapita'' indeed differs essentially from the ''Rape of the Lock'', both in spirit, and execution. There is nothing in the latter that can be compared with the humour of the former, or with the admirably grotesque pictures with which it abounds".
Translations
Translations of Pope's poem into French, Italian and German were all made in the first half of the 18th century. Others in those languages followed later, as well as in Dutch, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish and Danish. The work had originally come to European notice through an anonymous prose version, ''La Boucle de Cheveux Enlevée'', published anonymously in 1728 and now ascribed either to Marthe-Marguerite,
Marquise de Caylus
Marthe-Marguerite Le Valois de Villette de Mursay, marquise de Caylus (1673–1729), was a French noblewoman and writer.
Born in Poitou, she was the daughter of vice-admiral Philippe, Marquis de Villette-Mursay, and Marie-Anne de Châteauneuf, w ...
, or to
Pierre Desfontaines
The Abbé Pierre François Guyot-Desfontaines (1685 in Rouen – 16 December 1745 in Paris) was a French journalist, translator and popular historian.
Known today for his quarrels with Voltaire, Desfontaines can be regarded as the founder of ...
. Despite there being a playful French model for this kind of writing in
Boileau's ''Lutrin'', the translator claims of Pope's work in the preface that "I do not believe that there can be found in our language anything more ingenious, in this playful genre." A verse translation by
Jean-François Marmontel
Jean-François Marmontel (11 July 1723 – 31 December 1799) was a French historian, writer and a member of the Encyclopédistes movement.
Biography
He was born of poor parents at Bort, Limousin (today in Corrèze). After studying with th ...
followed in 1746.
![Lockenraub Gottsched](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Lockenraub_Gottsched.jpg)
The first German translation, ''Der merckwürdige Haar-Locken-Raub'' (1739), was a rendering of the French prose version of 1728.
Luise Gottsched
Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched (born Kulmus, 11 April 1713 – 26 June 1762) was a German poet, playwright, essayist, and translator, and is often considered one of the founders of modern German theatrical comedy.
Biography
She was born in Da ...
's verse translation, ''Der Lockenraub'', was begun in the 1730s, again using a French prose version. However, she revised it totally once she managed to obtain the original text in English and in this way pioneered an interest in English literature in the German-language area. From then on, "Pope became very popular as a model for German poets from the 1750s onwards and remained an important source of inspiration throughout the second half of the 18th century," and in particular as a model for mock heroic poetry.
Early Italian verse translations of the poem include Andrea Bonducci's ''Il Riccio Rapito'' (Florence 1739), followed by
Antonio Schinella Conti
Antonio Schinella Conti (1677–1749), also known by his religious title as Abate Conti, was an Italian writer, translator, mathematician, philosopher and physicist. He was born in Padua on 22 January 1677 and died there on 6 April 1749.
Life
In ...
's version, begun much earlier and finally published in Venice in 1751. The vogue for Pope's work went on to blossom at the start of the 19th century with separate translations by Federico Federici (Faziola 1819), Vincenzo Benini (Milan 1819), Sansone Uzielli (Livorno 1822), and Antonio Beduschi (Milan 1830).
Scandinavian versions appeared near the start of the 19th century, beginning with the Swedish ''Våldet på Belindas låck'' (Stockholm, 1797) by Johan Lorens Odhelius (1737–1816). It was followed in 1819 by ''Den bortröfvade hårlocken'' by Jonas Magnus Stjernstolpe (1777–1831), and by the Danish imitation ''Belinde, eller den røvede Haarlok'' by Anton Martini (1773–1847) in 1829.
Parody and interpretation
In 1717
Giles Jacob
Giles Jacob (1686 – 8 May 1744) was a British legal writer whose works include a well-received law dictionary that became the most popular and widespread law dictionary in the newly independent United States.McDowell, Gary. The Language of Law a ...
published his bawdy parody, ''The Rape of the Smock'', the plot of which turns on voyeurism and enforced seduction, building on erotic undertones present in Pope's poem which were to be taken up by its illustrators, and reached an apotheosis in
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Woodblock printing in Japan, Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He ...
's work.
The 1714 edition of ''The Rape of the Lock'' and those that followed from Lintot's press had come with six woodcuts designed by
Louis Du Guernier
Louis Du Guernier (1677–1716), also anglicized as Lewis Du Guernier, was a Franco-English engraver.
Born in Paris in 1677, Louis was probably a descendant of the well-known French artists of the same name. He was a pupil of Louis de Châtillon ...
. Although the work of this artist has been described as unimaginative, he goes beyond his literal brief in making Belinda sleep in unwarranted
décolletage
Cleavage is the narrow depression or hollow between the breasts of a woman. The superior portion of cleavage may be accentuated by clothing such as a low-cut neckline that exposes the division, and often the term is used to describe the low neck ...
in the first canto, while in the second giving the "painted vessel" on its way down the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
the tilted perspective of the ''
Ship of Fools
The ship of fools is an allegory, originating from Book VI of Plato's ''Republic'', about a ship with a dysfunctional crew. The allegory is intended to represent the problems of governance prevailing in a political system not based on expert kn ...
''. Furthermore, Du Guernier's frontispiece owes its iconography to a print by
Étienne Baudet
Étienne Baudet, an eminent French engraver, was born at Vineuil, in the department of Loir-et-Cher, about 1636. He was a pupil of Sébastien Bourdon and Cornelis Bloemaert, and afterwards went to Rome, and appears to have adopted the manner o ...
after a painting by
Francesco Albani
Francesco Albani or Albano (17 March or 17 August 1578 – 4 October 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter who was active in Bologna (1591–1600), Rome (1600–1609), Bologna (1609), Viterbo (1609–1610), Bologna (1610), Rome (1610–1617), ...
of ''Venus at her Toilette'', making for an identification of Belinda with the goddess.
The German translation of the poem published from
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
in 1744 had five copperplate engravings by Anna Maria Werner (1689–1753), the court painter of
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
. It has been observed, however, that the places they depict are not specifically English and that the scene of the game of ombre in Canto 3 is "clearly based on a Leipzig coffee-house", complete with lapdogs tumbling on the floor.
![Sir Plume Demands Leslie](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Sir_Plume_Demands_Leslie.jpg)
Meanwhile, in Britain most illustrations of the work were descending into "high kitsch and low camp". The 1798 edition, for example, illustrated by a variety of contemporary artists, is particularly noted now for
Thomas Stothard
Thomas Stothard (17 August 1755 – 27 April 1834) was an English painter, illustrator and engraver.
His son, Robert T. Stothard was a painter ( fl. 1810): he painted the proclamation outside York Minster of Queen Victoria's accession to the t ...
's watercolour in which fairies are pictured with wings. Advised by
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
to make the sylphs like butterflies, Stothard decided to "paint the wing from the butterfly itself" and immediately went out to catch one.
Oil paintings by two artists rise a little above this judgment.
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli ( ; German: Johann Heinrich Füssli ; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many of his works, such as ''The Nightmare'', deal with supernatura ...
's erotic ''The Dream of Belinda'' (1789–1790) goes beyond the actual episode to incorporate other imagery from the poem and some details peculiar only to Fuseli, such as the white moths in copulation in the lower foreground. He also illustrated the Cave of Spleen episode from Canto 4, but this met with contemporary scepticism and the original is now lost. Only
Thomas Holloway
:
Thomas Holloway (22 September 180026 December 1883) was an English patent medicine vendor and philanthropist.
Early life
Holloway was born in Devonport, Plymouth, Devon, the eldest son of Thomas and Mary Holloway (née Chellew), who at the ...
's print remains to suggest that critics might have been right in seeing in it more "burlesque than sublimity". In the following century,
Charles Robert Leslie
Charles Robert Leslie (19 October 1794 – 5 May 1859) was an English genre painter.
Biography
Leslie was born in London to American parents. When he was five years of age he returned with them to the United States, where they settled in Philad ...
's 1854 period piece, ''Sir Plume Demands the Restoration of the Lock'', takes place in a cluttered drawing room in which the kind of lap dog present in many previous pictures feeds from a dish on the floor.
The nine photo-engravings with which Aubrey Beardsley "embroidered" the 1896 edition of the poem drew on the French
rococo
Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
style, in which there was a contemporary revival of interest. Well received at the time, their enduring popularity can be attributed to their reinterpreting of the poem in ways only a very few had managed earlier.
Influence
Pope's fanciful conclusion to his work, translating the stolen lock into the sky, where "'midst the stars
tinscribes Belinda's name", contributed to the eventual naming of three of the
moons of Uranus
Uranus, the seventh planet of the Solar System, has 27 known moons, most of which are named after characters that appear in, or are mentioned in, the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Uranus's moons are divided into three groups: t ...
after characters from ''The Rape of the Lock'':
Umbriel,
Ariel
Ariel may refer to:
Film and television
*Ariel Award, a Mexican Academy of Film award
* ''Ariel'' (film), a 1988 Finnish film by Aki Kaurismäki
* ''ARIEL Visual'' and ''ARIEL Deluxe'', 1989 and 1991 anime video series based on the novel series ...
, and
Belinda
Belinda is a feminine given name of unknown origin, apparently coined from Italian ''bella'', meaning "beautiful". Alternatively it may be derived from the Old High German name ''Betlinde'', which possibly meant "bright serpent" or "bright linde ...
. The first two are major bodies, named in 1852 by
John Herschel
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (; 7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical wor ...
, a year after their discovery. The inner satellite Belinda was discovered in 1986, and is the only other of the planet's twenty-seven moons taken from Pope's poem rather than Shakespeare's works.
Modern adaptations of ''The Rape of the Lock'' include Deborah Mason's opera-ballet, on which the composer worked since 2002. Its premiere was as an opera-oratorio in June 2016, performed by the Spectrum Symphony of New York city and the
New York Baroque Dance Company. There was a 2006 performance at
Sheffield University
, mottoeng = To discover the causes of things
, established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions:
– Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield
, type = Pu ...
's Drama Studio of a musical work based on Pope's poem composed by Jenny Jackson.
References
External links
''The Rape of the Lock''at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rape of the Lock, The
Narrative poems
Literary parodies
1712 poems
Works by Alexander Pope
Roman à clef novels
Mock-heroic English poems
Sylphs