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What oft uas thought, but ne'er so well expressed
(Essay on Criticism, 298)

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.

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A. Mock-epic devices

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:

Epic Device Mock-epic example from Rape
a) Introduction to the muse "I sing-This verse to Caryll, Muse!"(I,3)
b) Heroic characters Main character is a member of the weaker sex (passim)
c) Major conflict Quarrel between the friends of Belinda and
the Baron (passim, especially V, 35-102)
d) Elevated style Solemn, mannered speech of the characters
(passim)
e) Set speeches The Baron's triumphant speech (¢¼, 131-39), Clarissa's words minutely paralleling Sarpedon's speech in Iliad, XII (V, 7ff)
f) Learned genealogy The origin of the bodkin (V, 88-96)
g) Great battles
Card game of ombre (III, 25-98)
h) Supernatural agents Sylphs (I, 20-28, 145ff; II, 73-116; III, 135-46)
and gnomes (IV, 13ff; V, 71-74)
i) The underworld Cave of spleen (IV, 16-87)
j) A voyage Belinda's barge on the Thames (II, 1ff)

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,

Ease, pleasure, virtue, all, our sex resign (IV, 106),

some earlier editiors deleted the comma after the word "all". But this could only commend itself as the destruction of a wicked innuendo.

There are intentional parallels to specific lines in other epics, meant to elevate and universalize the Rape by their verbal echoes of a loftier argument, and to diminish by contrast the people and activities that make up Belinda's story. Three examples may be cited:

1) What dire offense from amorous causes springs,
what mighty contests rise from trivial things,
¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K
Oh, say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
In tasks so bold can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?
(Rape, I, 1-2, 9-12)

O Muse! the Causes and the Crimes related,
What Goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate:
For what Offence the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a Man!
Involv'd his anxious Life in endless Cares,
Expos'd to Wants. And hurry'd into Wars!
Can Heav'nly Minds such high resentment show;
Or exercise their Spight in Human Wose?
(Dryden's Aeneid, I, 11-18)

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.

2) And Troy prevails by Armies not her own
(Pope's Iliad, II, 160)

And Betty's prais'd for Labours not her own
(Rape, I, 148)

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.

3) Spears lean on Spears, on Targets Targets throng,
Helms stuck to Helms, and Man drove Man along
(Pope's Iliad, XIII, 181-82)

Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,
Beaux banish Beaux, and coaches coaches drive
(Rape, I, 101-02)

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.

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B. Juxtaposition and chasmus

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.

4) Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux (Rape, I, 138)

Rocks, Caves, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death
(Paradise Lost, II, 621' see below, no. 17)

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:

5) Not louder shrieks to prtying heaven are cast,
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last
(Rape III, 157-158)

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"):

6) Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law.
   
X
Or
some frail China jar receive a flaw,
(Rape, II, 105)

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).

7) One speaks the glory of the British Queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen
(Rape, III, 13)

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)

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C. Parallelism and antithesis

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.

8) Not youthful kings in battle seized alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! For thy ravishes hair.
(Rpae, IV, 3-10)

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).

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D. Zeugma

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:

9) Or stain her honor or her new brocade (Rape, II, 107).
Here the verb, "stain," not only means to soil one's clothing but is also a metaphorical way of setting a mark of disgrace on someone.

10) Dost sometimes counsel take-and sometimes tea
(Rape, III,8).

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).

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E. Parody

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"

11) The skillful nymph reviews her force with care;
"Let Spades be trumps!" she said, and trumps they were
(Rape, III,45-6).

And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light
(Genesis, 1:15).

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.
Stylistically, parody not only expresses itself through allusion but also through periphrasis (a circumlocution which deliberately uses a longer phrase to draw out an experience and solemnize it), a kind of expression originally devised to achieve variety but which often developed into cliche-ridden kinds of poetic diction. For instance, "glittering forfex" (Rape, III, 147) just means scissors, but the peripharsis has an epic sound and achieves both an absurd portentousness and a beautifrl diminution. The same word, "glittering," is used in abother context where Pope achieves a triple effect of periphrasis, allusion and parody:

12) And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil
(Rape, I, 132).

"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."

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F. Pun

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:

13) Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites,
Burns to encounter two adventurous knights,
At ombre singly to decide their doom,
And swells her breast with conquests yet to come
(Rape, III, 25-8).

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:

14) Oh, hadst thou, cruel! Been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"
(Rape, IV, 175-76)

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:

15) Nor feared the chief the unequal fight to try.
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
(Rape, V, 77-78).

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:

16) "Boast not my fall," he cried, "insulting foe!
Thou by some other shalt be laid as low"
(Rape, V, 97-8).

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.

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G. Hyperbole

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,

17) Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lapdogs, parrots, perish all!
(Rape, IV, 119-20; see above, no. 4).

In another passage, we see Pope's technique of diminishing the scale and reducing things to miniature:

18) This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.
(Rape, I, 133-38).

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.

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H. Other Literary Devices

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.

Aptograms II, 112-15; V, 62-63
Litotes III, 21-22; IV, 43-44
Metonymy III, 110
Oxymoron V, 46, 61
Paradox II, 8
Personification I, 134
Repetition IV, 3-8
Synecdoche II, 45 56; IV, 173-75
Transferred Epithet IV, 23

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.

We may conclude in the words of a famous modern editor of Pope's Rape:
Its world is vast and complicated. It draws no line of cleavage between its "seriousness" and its mockery. Belinda is not closed up in a rigid coterie which Clarissa and the rest of the poem mock at. Pope, fierce and tender by turns, knows no more than Hazlitt, "whether to laugh or weep' over the poem. He is aware of values that transcend his satire:

Belinda smil'd and all the World was gay

and

If to her share some Female Errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget'em all.

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.*

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* 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