Preloved Used & Recycled Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock is one of the most famous mock-epic poems in English literature, and the Oxford Student Texts edition is designed to help students study it in depth. Let me give you a clear overview of what this text is, why it matters, and how the Oxford edition supports learning:
Author: Alexander Pope (1688–1744), a leading poet of the Augustan age.
Genre: Mock-epic (satirical epic parody).
First published: 1712 (two-canto version), expanded in 1714 to five cantos.
Plot: Based on a real incident where Lord Petre cut a lock of hair from Arabella Fermor, causing social scandal. Pope transforms this trivial event into a grand, epic-style poem.
Themes:
Vanity and superficiality of aristocratic society.
Satire of gender roles and social pretensions.
The tension between triviality and grandeur.
Style: Uses heroic couplets (pairs of rhymed iambic pentameter lines), parodying epic conventions like supernatural beings (sylphs instead of gods) and battles (card games instead of wars).