Formative Assessment Essay

The Rape of the Lock, written by pontiff in reply to a feud between two friends about the theft of a lock of hair, is revolutionary in its evolution of the comic satire music musical genre into the field of daringal poetry.pope, an avid student of the Greek epics (he produced his own translations of whatsoever that provided much of his income during his life), takes the basic skeleton of an epic its structure, critical content and evening linguistic points and crafts around the skeleton a poem of wit and funniness that is at its core epic, but also uses this very epic anchor to undermine its tales own importance and to satirise the content that has been moulded around the form. This mental hospital from pope marks the offshoot of the epic genre, transforming it into mock epic, an independent genre that bears many of the traits of its forebearer in a new light.The transformations to the epic that pope undertakes in the Rape of the Lock to satiric effect can be by and large split into transformations of heroic content and transformations of heroic language. The former can be clearly observed here Pope takes a staple of epic writing, heroic limbry, and twists its use to his satiric needs. The implement itself is given, through the use of a similar description, equal place with great weapons like Agamemnons sceptre, whose beginning was used to reinforce Agamemnons dominance and power in the Iliad, macrocosm forged by Hephaestus and owned by the Gods from Zeus to Kronos.Belindas weapons subscriber line is far less great. Instead of a scepter, the weapon of kings and priests in bulls eyes writing, Belinda wields a bodkin, a hair needle. Even that difference itself is satirical Agamemnons kingship is of great import to the Iliad so the parallel with a bodkin, which relate to the hair in question much like the scepter links with kingship, makes a clear statement on the relative importance of the course in the Rape of the Lock.The lineage too satiri ses the pointlessness of dispute no claim of divinity (and thus righteousness) is made on the part of Belindas weapon in fact its lineage mainly consists of feminine objects with the solely male menti wizd in its lineage also being the only one to explicitly be mentioned dying. Perhaps Pope, often clocks accused of being or so sexist, is exploitation this contrast and development to imply that the whole issue is a womans trifle and nothing next to the male quarrels of Achilles and Agamemnon.On top of this, the weapon is not the fixed centre of the lineage as in the Iliad, in which the weapon started as a divine weapon and stayed that way. Instead the object is mutable it starts as signet rings, develops into a buckle and and then becomes a bodkin. Pope changes up the epic formula of the mighty weapon into something changeable and thus undistinguished, paralleling with the argument he is satirising, the implication being that it is insignificant and will easily be forgotten. The weapon also shows another sexual perversion of the epic poem that Pope uses.Protection, be it through armour or weaponry, tends to have a high place in the Greek epics. Heroes often wear famed suits of armour or use shields/weapons to survive insuperable odds (for example the reflective shield in Perseus tale in Ovids Metamorphoses that slays Medusa). This element of protection, divine or otherwise, is a theme that Pope subverts consistently. From the slyph Ariel who is half dissolvd even by light to the Cosmetic powers of her go under and make-up, nothing effectively protects Belinda.The bodkin is no different, it fails to protect her locks from being come out in the initial case, and here, although she uses it to attack the Baron, it fails to return its charge, her hair, to her. Pope is modernising traditional epics, using these typical protections to mock high societies fixation on appearance. All of her outer facing beauty and quaint bodkins cannot protect her from the advan ces of a single man, so what, Pope asks, is the use of all this artifice? Pope also mutates generic language elements from epic literature for his satirical intentions.In this passage, the clearest example is in his use of the ten syllable rhyming heroic couplet. Pope takes the rhyme of the couplet and uses it to link together two separate terminology or ideas, often to a comical effect. Here, in the lines, Nor feared the chief the poor fight to try, Who sought no more than on his foe to die. Pope has the first line of the couplet set up the Barons bravery by expounding his fearlessness in fighting against Belinda in unequal combat (ironic in itself due to Belindas natural weakness compared to his manly strength referred to in the next couplet) before defeating the heroic xpectancy with a sexual pun the phrase to die holding at the time a dual meaning referring to sexual advent, and often premature climax at that. His heroism is built up and destroyed within a couplet with the c ontrast of noble bravery and base desire providing a humorous and satirical twist on the typical heroism of the heroic couplet by suggesting that the drive behind the Barons actions is, at its deepest level, sexual, rather than noble or courtly.