Feeling his work was incomplete, Pope continued revision and published a version expanded to five cantos in 1714 to which he added the sylphs and gnomes that exaggerated the classical effect, as well as engravings. As Pope wrote to a friend, the tutor John Caryll hoped Pope’s work might for the two families “laugh them together again.”įortunately, The Rape of the Lock had the desired effect upon its publication in original version as part of Miscellanies in 1712.
Lord Petre’s teacher contacted Pope and asked that he write a poem in jest about the event. As prominent families in a small Catholic community, of which Pope himself was a part, they threatened to disrupt relationships beyond their own through their quarrel. Miss Fermor saw no humor in the act, and her negative reaction caused a break in relations between the Petres and the Fermors. While attending a party, a certain young Lord Petre had as a joke clipped a ringlet from the head of Arabella Fermor.
The mock-epic developed in reaction to a real social event that estranged two previously cordial families and a friend’s request that Pope take a part in defusing the anger that led to that estrangement.
With Pope’s The Rape of the Lock the motivation remains clear, explained by Pope himself. The new historicist critical approach demands that works be placed within their author’s political, social, and biographical contexts in order not only to offer readers a better understanding of their words and allusions, but also to suggest what might have motivated a writer to produce a specific work. Analysis of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the LockĪs have other of works by Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock ( 1712) has inspired many full-length books of critical consideration, so important was its effect upon Pope, his readership, the genre of poetry, and Pope’s legacy.
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