Book Description
This edition reprints the text of Pope's classic poem — both the five-canto 1714 version and the facsimilie of the original 1712 version — together with a broad selection of documents. Including correspondence, poems, broadsides, reviews, and parodies, the documents focus special attention on Pope's life and career as well as on eighteenth-century poetic traditions and innovations, social habits and assumptions, historical events, and political implications. A general introduction providing historical and cultural background, a chronology of Pope's life and times, an introduction to each thematic group of documents, headnotes, extensive annotations, a selected bibliography, and a generous collection of maps, portraits, and illustrations make this volume a unique scholarly edition of this classic work of eighteenth-century literature.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Mock-epic poem in heroic couplets by Alexander Pope. The first version, published in 1712, consisted of two cantos; the final version, published in 1714, was expanded to five cantos. Based on an actual incident and written to reconcile the families that had been estranged by it, The Rape of the Lock recounts the story of a young woman who has a lock of hair stolen by an ardent young man. Pope couches the trivial event in terms usually reserved for incidents of great moment--such as the quarrel between the Greeks and the Trojans. The poem marries a rich range of literary allusions and an ironic commentary on the contemporary social world with a sense of suppressed energy threatening to break through the civilized veneer.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This edition reprints the text of Pope's classic poem - both the five-canto 1714 version and the facsimile of the original 1712 version - together with a broad selection of documents that have been carefully chosen to put the poem into the social and historical context of Pope's eighteenth century. Including correspondence, poems, broadsides, reviews, and parodies, the documents focus special attention on Pope's life and career as well as on eighteenth-century poetic traditions and innovations, social habits and assumptions, historical events, and political implications.

FROM THE CRITICS

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