The+Rape+of+the+Lock

First some Background

 * Oscar Wilde was no great fan of Alexander Pope. "There are two ways of disliking poetry," he once remarked. "One way is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope."
 * Unlike most planetary moons, which are named from antiquity, all the moons of Uranus are named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
 * Mock heroic verse
 * Based on a true story!
 * Satire – meant to try to get the families to make up
 * Lord Petre cut off Arabella Fermor’s hair. The families got upset
 * John Caryll, Pope’s friend whom poem is addressed to, suggested that if they laughed together they could make up
 * Edited a few times to add “machinery”, eg supernatural elements of story. Added Umbriel (reincarnation of a prude), the sylphs, etc
 * Added Clarissa’s speech to help highlight the moral of the poem. What is the moral of the story?
 * Translation of the epigram – “I was unwilling, Belinda, to ravish your locks; but I rejoice to have conceded this to your prayers”

In class, we went over the following questions.
[|RapeofLockQuestions.doc]