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These Machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits. The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the Critics, to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons are made to act in a poem: For the ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. An imperfect copy having been offered to a Bookseller, you had the good nature for my sake to consent to the publication of one more correct: This I was forced to, before I had executed half my design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to complete it. But as it was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its way into the world. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only to divert a few young Ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own. It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since I dedicate it to You. Pope added to the second edition the following dedicatory letter to Mrs. Belinda's legitimate rage is thus alleviated and tempered by her good humour, as directed by the character Clarissa. Pope arguably satirises it from within rather than looking down judgmentally on the characters. It is a satire on contemporary society which showcases the lifestyle led by some people of that age.
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The humour of the poem comes from the storm in a teacup being couched within the elaborate, formal verbal structure of an epic poem. Although the poem is humorous at times, Pope keeps a sense that beauty is fragile, and emphasizes that the loss of a lock of hair touches Belinda deeply. He also uses the epic style of invocations, lamentations, exclamations and similes, and in some cases adds parody to imitation by following the framework of actual speeches in Homer's Iliad. The abduction of Helen of Troy becomes here the theft of a lock of hair the gods become minute sylphs the description of Achilles' shield becomes an excursus on one of Belinda's petticoats. Pope's poem uses the traditional high stature of classical epics to emphasise the triviality of the incident. "The New Star", illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for The Rape of the Lock Pope, writing pseudonymously as Esdras Barnivelt, also published A Key to the Lock in 1714 as a humorous warning against taking the poem too seriously. Pope derived his sylphs from the 17th-century French Rosicrucian novel Comte de Gabalis. He utilised the character Belinda to represent Arabella and introduced an entire system of " sylphs", or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodised version of the gods and goddesses of conventional epic. Pope, also a Catholic, wrote the poem at the request of friends in an attempt to "comically merge the two" worlds, the heroic with the social. In terms of the sensibilities of the age, however, even this non-consensual personal invasion might be interpreted as bringing dishonour. The poem's title does not refer to the extreme of sexual rape, but to an earlier definition of the word derived from the Latin rapere (supine stem raptum), "to snatch, to grab, to carry off" -in this case, the theft and carrying away of a lock of hair. (For example, Petre, being a Catholic, could not take the place in the House of Lords that would otherwise have been rightfully his.) Petre had cut off a lock of Arabella's hair without permission, and the consequent argument had created a breach between the two families. That Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, each was member of an aristocratic recusant Catholic families, at a time in England when, under such laws as the Test Act, all denominations except Anglicanism suffered legal restrictions and penalties.
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The poem of The Rape of the Lock satirises a minor incident of life, by comparing it to the epic world of the gods, and is based on an event recounted to Alexander Pope by his friend John Caryll.