Anne Finch's Opposition to The Rape of the Lock
The Restoration Period (1660-1700) was a period of social, political and philosophical turmoil, which laid the foundation for future centuries. This period was marked by an advance in colonization and trade and by the birth of the Whig and Tory parties. In poetry, works of Alexander Pope and Anne Finch and a number of other poets distinguishes the Restoration. But, there are several objections from these poets; one particular opposition occurs between Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Anne Finch.
Pope was born into a Catholic family during a period of intense anti-Catholic sentiment in England. His family was forced to move because Catholics were forbid from living within a certain area of London at this time. While Pope was growing up, Catholicism affected his education although there were very few Catholic schools. His life would soon influence his writing of The Rape of the Lock. The following comes from the Twickenham Edition of Pope’s poem:
The families concerned in the Rape of the Lock – The Fermors, Petres, and Carylls—were
prominent members of that group of great intermarried Roman Catholic families owning land in the home countries. Most of whom came within the circle of Pope’s friends and acquaintances and to whom Pope considered his own family to belong. Some time before 21 March 1712, when Pope sold his poem to Lintott, Robert, Lord Petre had cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor’s hair, and John Caryll had suggested to Pope that he should write a poem to heal the estrangement that followed between the two families. (Twinckenham 83)
Alexander Pope is responsible for one of the most comic poems of the eighteenth century, The Rape of the Lock. This poem was written s...
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importance in writing about her own pain, while Pope finds it important to write about others pain. He writes about the pain of Belinda and Baron.
In conclusion, there are several examples, as one can observe, of Finch’s objection to The Rape of the Lock. The life and beliefs of these two authors were entirely different and this seems to be the major reason Finch may have objected to Pope’s poem.
Bibliography:
Cunningham, J.S., ed. The Rape of the Lock. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1966.
DeMaria, Robert, ed. British Literature. Massachusetts:
Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
Goldgar, Bertrand, ed. Literary Criticism of Alexander
Pope. New York: University of Nebraska Press,
1965.
http://users.ox.ac.k/~worc0337/authors/anne.conway.htlm
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Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
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Kelly, John. ENGLISH 2308E: American Literature Notes. London, ON: University of Western. Fall 2014. Lecture Notes.
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In order to see how Gray’s Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat uses mirrors the style of the mock epic, we must pinpoint features and conventions of epic literature. One common feature of the epic is that there is commonly a huge amount of focus on an object of desire. In the case of a mock epic, the object in question is given a disproportionate amount of importance. In Alexander Pope’s mock epic The Rape of the Lock, the main object of desire is Belinda’s lock of hair. As the lock is an object that the Sylphs surrounding her are tasked to guard, is it treated is something sacred, and becomes a symbol of Belinda’s chastity. In the case of Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, the goldfishes are treated as the object of desire. The fishes take on “angel forms” and don hues of purple and gold – regal colors that give the fishes a disparate sense of importance and entice the cat towards the fishbowl. This flattering...
“What dire offence from amorous causes springs, / What mighty contests rise from trivial things,'; (Pope, ll. 1-2). These first lines of The Rape of the Lock immediately try to make light of the entire situation. The reader has yet to learn what the “dire offence'; is, but already likens it to the Adam and Eve’s “trivial'; mistake, eating from the tree of knowledge, which forced them out of Paradise. It will take a further reading of the poem to learn that the crime is simply the cutting of a lock of hair, and not a monumental fall from God’s graces.
Isles, Duncan. "Pope and Criticism," in Alexander Pope, edited by Peter Dixon. Writers and their Backgrounds. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1972.
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