The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope. One of the most commonly cited examples of high burlesque, it was first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (May 1712) in two cantos (334 lines); a revised edition "Written by Mr. Pope" followed in March 1714 as a five-canto version (794 lines) accompanied by six engravings. Pope boasted that this sold more than three thousand copies in its first four days. The final form of the poem appeared in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem was much translated and contributed to the growing popularity of mock-heroic in Europe.

Pope's fanciful conclusion to his work, translating the stolen lock into the sky, where "'midst the stars [it] inscribes Belinda's name", alludes to the similar myth about the hair of the (real-world) Berenice II of Egypt, said to have been taken up to the heavens as the constellation Coma Berenices. This celestial conclusion contributed to the eventual naming of three of the moons of Uranus after characters from The Rape of the Lock: Umbriel, Ariel, and Belinda. The first two are major bodies, named in 1852 by John Herschel, a year after their discovery. The inner satellite Belinda was discovered in 1986, and is the only other of the planet's twenty-seven moons taken from Pope's poem rather than Shakespeare's works.

Modern adaptations of The Rape of the Lock include Deborah Mason's opera-ballet, on which the composer worked since 2002. Its premiere was as an opera-oratorio in June 2016, performed by the Spectrum Symphony of New York city and the New York Baroque Dance Company. There was a 2006 performance at Sheffield University's Drama Studio of a musical work based on Pope's poem composed by Jenny Jackson. (wikipedia.org)

About the author:

Alexander Pope, (born May 21, 1688, London, England-died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London), poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712-14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733-34). He is one of the most epigrammatic of all English authors.

Pope's father, a wholesale linen merchant, retired from business in the year of his son's birth and in 1700 went to live at Binfield in Windsor Forest. The Popes were Roman Catholics, and at Binfield they came to know several neighbouring Catholic families who were to play an important part in the poet's life. Pope's religion procured him some lifelong friends, notably the wealthy squire John Caryll (who persuaded him to write The Rape of the Lock, on an incident involving Caryll's relatives) and Martha Blount, to whom Pope addressed some of the most memorable of his poems and to whom he bequeathed most of his property. But his religion also precluded him from a formal course of education, since Catholics were not admitted to the universities. He was trained at home by Catholic priests for a short time and attended Catholic schools at Twyford, near Winchester, and at Hyde Park Corner, London, but he was mainly self-educated. He was a precocious boy, eagerly reading Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, which he managed to teach himself, and an incessant scribbler, turning out verse upon verse in imitation of the poets he read. The best of these early writings are the "Ode on Solitude" and a paraphrase of St. Thomas ?Kempis, both of which he claimed to have written at age 12. (britannica.com)