Hot take: Alexander Pope isn't a good poet.
There, I said it.
Aside from the satirical content and thematics, the poem itself just objectively isn't good. I don't think that The Rape of the Lock is a poem that has truly earned the title of "classic" to the degree it has been given.
I think the preface says it best when it says that "certain qualities of the highest poet Pope no doubt lacked: lofty imagination, intense passion, and vast human sympathy." However, this isn't something that Pope could really help, so I can't hold it against him. They're just necessary qualities for great poets, so it's odd that he would pursue poetry when he was without such vital pieces of the puzzle. Aside from this, the structure of this poem is poor. The sentence structure and word choice is convoluted even for this time period. Characters are rarely introduced effectively and shifts from narration to dialogue are never communicated in their entirety. Milton wrote in this style ten times more efficiently and he was blind when he had Paradise Lost transcribed. The bar was set really, really high and Pope simply did not have the hops to reach it.
That being said, I have never been and will likely never be a fan of Alexander Pope for numerous reasons, but mainly I just feel like he's overrated. For an average poet to go down in history as a great man of letters is frustrating to me, especially when there were so many fantastic poets that coexisted with him that rarely get the same recognition.
I'm gonna try to say something nice about this poem because there is some decent symbolism in here and the satire is well thought-out.
I really did like the symbolism of Belinda's vanity being an altar. The phrase "sacred rites of Pride" really stood out to me in that passage. I feel like Belinda is intended to be representative of what was wrong with Woman in Pope's eyes, but in my mind she portrays vanity as an institution. I feel like Belinda is our current All-Eyes-On-Me culture. I'm not going to really expound on this in much detail just because this post is so long already, but that passage of Belinda being made beautiful was one that I read over a couple times.
eliza & abbie
There, I said it.
Aside from the satirical content and thematics, the poem itself just objectively isn't good. I don't think that The Rape of the Lock is a poem that has truly earned the title of "classic" to the degree it has been given.
I think the preface says it best when it says that "certain qualities of the highest poet Pope no doubt lacked: lofty imagination, intense passion, and vast human sympathy." However, this isn't something that Pope could really help, so I can't hold it against him. They're just necessary qualities for great poets, so it's odd that he would pursue poetry when he was without such vital pieces of the puzzle. Aside from this, the structure of this poem is poor. The sentence structure and word choice is convoluted even for this time period. Characters are rarely introduced effectively and shifts from narration to dialogue are never communicated in their entirety. Milton wrote in this style ten times more efficiently and he was blind when he had Paradise Lost transcribed. The bar was set really, really high and Pope simply did not have the hops to reach it.
That being said, I have never been and will likely never be a fan of Alexander Pope for numerous reasons, but mainly I just feel like he's overrated. For an average poet to go down in history as a great man of letters is frustrating to me, especially when there were so many fantastic poets that coexisted with him that rarely get the same recognition.
I'm gonna try to say something nice about this poem because there is some decent symbolism in here and the satire is well thought-out.
I really did like the symbolism of Belinda's vanity being an altar. The phrase "sacred rites of Pride" really stood out to me in that passage. I feel like Belinda is intended to be representative of what was wrong with Woman in Pope's eyes, but in my mind she portrays vanity as an institution. I feel like Belinda is our current All-Eyes-On-Me culture. I'm not going to really expound on this in much detail just because this post is so long already, but that passage of Belinda being made beautiful was one that I read over a couple times.
eliza & abbie
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