Alexabder
Pope , Neoclassicism|
What oft uas
thought, but ne'er so well expressed Pope was a master of both language and rhetoric; this can be best illustrated by citing examples of his artistic use of words. Often one couplet or phrase will contain several literary devices lapping unavoidable. The following list is by no means exhaustive and the reader is invited to discover additional examples of Pope's couplet art. [back] |
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Mock-epic devices are ways in which the poet parodies (see below, nos. 1-4, 11, 12) the heroic style of Homer, Virgil, Milton, etc., by treating a trivial subject in a grand manner. Of all literary forms, the epic lends itself most easily to parody; there is always something incongruous about anyone who takes himself too seriously or is perpetually posturing. All the conventional epic devices find their diminutive counterpart in the Rape of the Lock. The important epic conventions are listed below with their mock-epic counterpart illustrated from the Rape:
Pope not only uses the Greek
and Roman classics as the serious context to play off his little comedy,
but he also continues the mock-epic tradition of other European authors
such as Boileau. One of the most brilliant and original things about the
Rape of the Lock is how Pope continues the process of diminution.
He makes most things smaller in size and more femininely exquisite in
quality, which better fulfilled the demands of mockery. He maked his hero
a woman, while in the old epics the heroes were god-like Hectors. Ajax
and Achilles had their great shields magnificently displayed by Homer.
In Pope these shields have become Belinda's tremblingly expansive petticoat.
The sylphs, card game, and Homeric similes also continue this process
of diminution. The machinery of Pope is mainly provided by the sylphs,
who unite the bodily fluidity of Milton's angels with the minuteness of
Shakespeare's fairies. In Pope it is a game of cards drawn forth to combat
on a velvet plain and, later, a hullabaloo mainly of fans, silks, and
milliners' whalebone. The essential diminution process in the Rape
is so well sustained that it never reaches a point of diminishing returns.
Pope's finesse even extends itself to a careful choice of punctuation.
For instance, in the following line,
some earlier editiors deleted
the comma after the word "all". But this could only commend
itself as the destruction of a wicked innuendo.
Pope has subtly, under cover of the parody of epic, aroused a new set of tensions in his poem, moving from how heroes ought to behave, in the heroic tradition, to how lords and ladies ought, in deference to good breeding and social restraint. The two knds of decorum are brought into ironic juxtaposition. The irony is reinforced by setting the language of assault and compulsion so foreign to the appearance, at least, of the lords and the belles, against the standards of good breeding and politeness.
Here Pope indicates how much
Belinda's toilet owed to the Sylphs, and at the same time ironically parallels
the labors of her maid with the efforts of the Trojan warriors.
The rhetorical devices of juxtaposition and chiasmus (see below, nos. 4-7) are at work here to show the basic conflicts between the varying vanities in the heart of Belinda and the heroic field of battle in classical epic poetry. [back] |
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Juxtaposition and chasmus are the deliberate arranging of words in such an order that their very proximity to each other produce an unexpected result much like a collage or cinema montage. These devices are often reinforced by rhyme and zeugma as well as by a high degree of parallelism, often antithetical, (see below, nos. 6, 9, 10). Perhaps the most famous example in the poem is the parody of Milton's description of chaos.
This insight into Belinda's elegant world, epitomized in her untidy dressing-table, is an excellent description of the confusions of that world. Pope's line vividly shows us the failure of elegance to sort out its values. His catalog of items contains one inharmonious term ("Bibles") through which Pope describes the disarray of values in his society by confounding antithetical objects like bibles and billet-doux. One of the felicities of this line is that the voiceless p sound continues throughout the line, merely changing to its voiced equivalent b sound on the last two nouns, "Bibles" and "billet-doux." Juxtaposition also may be a simple case of parallelism where the similarity in structure is vitiated by the difference in significance:
A sense of surprise and absurdity is created because the second part falls below our normal expectation. Here the death of a husband (usually considered a serious matter) is ironically equated with the death of a mere dog. This deliberate pathos is often reinforced by a chiastic structure (a term deriving from the Greek letter "chi," which is written like an "X"):
The lines reveal the cross-eyed
viewpoint of the feminine mind. In the first line the breakage, then the
fragile thing (the law); in the second line another fragile thing (the
jar), and then its breaking (the flaw). The parallel between a vase and
chastity, both of which are precious but easily broken, is given a kind
of roundness and completeness; intellectual lines are softened into the
concrete harmony of "law"and "flaw." The chiasmus
consists of a contrast between the active and passive voice and is enhanced
by the brilliant differentiation of the rhyme. Rhyme is an even more ingenious
manifestation of Pope's artistry. It is not enough to view Pope's rhymes
as a kind of phonetic harmony; in fact, a greater complexity and variety
becomes apparent when rhyme is connected to reason, for in his own words,
"The sound must seem an echo to the sense." (Essay on Criticism,
365).
The rhyme and parallelism emphasize the incongruity and ironic effect of a juxtaposition between dignity and triviality. What could be more different than a "British Queen" and an "Indian screen"? And yet, in the minds of the high society in question, they are of almost equal significance as matter for conversation! (Also see below no. 15) [back] |
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Parallelism and antithesis
are found throughout this poem on at least three levels of existence:
1) the epic world, 2) the world of social trivea, and 3) the world of
serious human issues. Compact heroic couplets (i.e., closed, iambic, pentameter
couplets with a decided caesura pause placed near the middle of the line),
require that two lines serve something of the function of a stanza. This
often means the relation between the structural parallelism of the first
and second line, or between the halves of a parallelism of a single line,
become studies in meaning-contrast. Thus, Pope's technical virtuosity
in the heroic couplet serves perfectly his desire to illustrate the antithetic
aspects of the truly "epic" world of Homer, etc. and Belinda's
pretentious world of petty social values.
These alternating lines of the sublime and the ridiculous, couched as they are in the periodical sentence of Gicero's style (namely, long, complex sentences of balanced phrasing with important words at the end for emphasis), are a kind of rhetorical metaphor. As Aristotle has said, metaphor is recognizing and exploiting similarities in dissimilars; here, the relationship between parallelism and antithesis is comparable to the working of metaphor, in which resemblances (syntactical sameness, anaphora-repetition, person-action parallels) derive their point from their differences (antithetical types of persons and events). [back] |
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Zeugma is the use of
a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner
that it applies to each in a different sense. It is a special form of
juxtaposition that Pope uses to convey a sense of incongruity; a single
verb (with a double meaning) is applied to a compound object:
This example of zeugma indicates that the Queen has just about the same grasp or serious affairs of state as she does on a teacup. She must take time out for tea as well as strategies of state, and (so the zeugma hints) values one about the same as the other. In either case, the effect is ultimately metaphorical, a correspondence being suggested between Belinda's confusions of attitudes towards external appearance (brocade) and interior moral values (chastity), or between Queen Anna's frame of mind about a social convention (tea) and political responsiblility (counsel). [back] |
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Parody is favorite 18th
century device because it simultaneously offers an imitation of the past
while satirizing the present. An example of this is the comparson of Belinda
to a creative deity from the Bible"
All mock-epic metaphors derive
some of their force from the shock elements in comparisons such as this
one between God Almighty creating light and a coquette playing cards.
The comparison could not function, however, unless there were an element
of valid similarity; and there is, in the fact that Belinda is throughout
the poem presented as a sort of goddess to the worshippers of love and
beauty.
"Glittering spoil" is an epic periphrasis for captured armor (as in Dryden's translation of the Aeneid, IX, 495). Here it is merely intended to describe Belinda's jewels. The deliberate misapplication is not only a literary joke (and beautifully accurate), but also a reflection of the extravagant seriousness with which the belle-goddess is decked with "offerings." [back] |
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Pun had been called
the lowest form of humor, but in Pope it is raised to the level of "true
wit" and artistic ambiguity. In one sense, it may be called a sound-metaphor,
for the same sound yields different meanings. Many of the puns have to
do with sex, but this should not surprise us for this is a story devoted
to the battle of the sexes:
On the surface, "knights"
is a term referring to the two young lords with whom Belinda wants to
play cards. The pun on "knights" (like "nights" of
love-making) and the amatory suggestion of "burns," is Pope's
hint that Belinda is using the card game for a deeper purpose: What Belinda
plays is of course "ombre," the Spanish word (hombre) for "man."
After Belinda has lost her lock to the Baron's fraud, she makes a classic
Freudian slip of the tongue:
In the context of the poem,
the "Hairs less in sight" undoubtedly refer to the bubic area
and the double entendre (twofold meaning) fits the deceptive sexual punning
that occurs throughout the poem (see also IV, 54). She has at last chosen
the the appearance of virginity instead of its reality. But paradoxically
the couplet expresses another hidden wish in conflict with the first one
intentionally, she wished to give herself to the Baron and fulfill herself
as woman. Belinda is no longer a virgin at heart. The following couplet
could be easily inseted in Pope's Iliad except for the doubke pun
on the rhyme words:
The Baron (chief) wished to
engage Belinda (his foe) in a contest of arms (note the deliberate pun
on "arms," for weapons are an extension of one's human arms).
He wishes to "try" her (engage her, try her out, annoy her)
and "die" on her (a commonplace literary substitute for scxual
intercourse). Afew lines later, the Baron continues:
There is an unwitting (?) pun by the Baron on "fall" (both a physical and a moral fall) and a very witty pun intended by Pope on "laid as low" (the ordinary physical posture for events concerning death and life). Pope's use of double entendre is not usuallyprurient; for sex is no mere excuse for pun and fun, but is fused with the texture, tension, and theme, and paradox of the poem. [back] |
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Hyperbole is a form
of bold exaggeration, emphasis or overstatement which can heighten one's
feeling for a given situation either through straightforward language
or ironic statement. As a "goddess," it is only natural for
Belinda to be described in extravagant terms: her eyes are as "bright
as the sun" (II, 13) and "eclipse the day" (I,14); she
is infatuated with her self-created "heavenly image' (I, 125) as
she "begins the sacred rites of Pride" at her dressing table
(an altar [I, 127]), like Milton's Eve at her creation, delighted with
her "smooth watery image" in the lake (Paradie Lost, IV, 449ff).
When Belinda smiled, "all the world was gay" (II, 52), but when
she felt chagrined, "That single act gives half the world the spleen"
(IV, 78). And rather than see her "inestimable prize" (her lock)
grace the "rapacious hand" of her foe, the Baron,
In another passage, we see
Pope's technique of diminishing the scale and reducing things to miniature:
The spacious worlds of Arabia and India crowd on Belinda's dressing table in a diminished form: Arabia is compressed into its perfume; India, into jewels. The unwieldly elephant and tortoise are transformed into dainty combs. The hair pins, like soldiers, arrange themselves in "shining rows" and are ready to be commanded by the "goddess." But Pope brings a sense of elegance and sensuous fullness which can in some respects with-stand and survive the ironic implications. Even his hyperboles, conspiring against Belinda by mimicking her vanity, retain a note of sincere homage. [back] |
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Listed below are a few more of the devices at work in Pope's poetry; the student will be amply rewarded by analyzing how these devices function in his masterful use of language.
From this brief survey of
Pope's use of language, we can better appreciate the Rape's complex
artistry. In addition, much of the fun of the poem consists in being able
to experience several levels of meaning simultaneously; for instance,
the surface or literal meaning; 2) the deeper or figurative meaning; 3)
the implied or extended meaning (often ironic), and 4) the same sound
with different meanings (a pun). And yet, paradoxically, the entire poem
is touched with a certain seriousness about the human impermanence which
Belinda's lock poignantly symbolizes. To appreciate this type of sophisticated
poetry requires that one develop a pair of stereophonic ears and a multi-track
mind.
and
The criticism the poem provides is sometimes more a picture than a criticism. It is so elaborate, shifting, constellated, that the intellect is baffled and demoralized by aesthetic sense and emotions. One is left looking at the face of the poem, as at Belinda's.* [back] * Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, ed. Geoffrey Tillotson, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.), pp. 119-120. |
Alexabder
Pope , Neoclassicism