| |
Mock-epic Devices /
Juxtaposition and Chiasmus / Parallelism and Antithesis
Zeugma /
Parody /
Pun /
Hyperbole /
Other Literary Devices
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.
Mock-epic Devices（Examples
1-3）
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 (Ⅳ, 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,
………………………………………………
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.
BACK
TOP
Juxtaposition
and Chiasmus（Exs. 4-7）
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)
BACK
TOP
Parallelism
and Antithesis（Exs. 8）
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).
BACK
TOP
Zeugma
（Exs. 9-10）
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).
BACK
TOP
Parody
（Exs. 11-12）
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."
BACK
TOP
Pun
（Exs. 13-16）
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.
BACK
TOP
Hyperbole
（Exs. 17-18）
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.
BACK
TOP
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.*
BACK
TOP
|
