'From Pope's point of view as a satirist,' writes Michael Seidel, ' London is filled with the bodies of dunces and awash in printer's ink,” referring to the proliferation of print culture in the early 18th century and its wider implications that so interested Pope. This proliferation manifests itself in various ways in his satires The Rape of the Lock [1712] and The Dunciad [published and revised 1728, 1729, 1742, and 1743] in which material culture saturates and overwhelms both poems. Both texts also share their roots in Homer's Iliad, a choice that in some ways eludes the saturation of material culture, since "epic," by its very nature, is concerned with grandeur, price and of trophies. Although some critics have viewed Pope's satires as mocking works, outrageous parodies of a sincere subject, in this essay I will discuss his use of Homer's work as a framing and comparison tool to ridicule his culture contemporary material as petty and illusory, in an era that was just beginning to develop an awareness of its heritage and its place in history as well as in the world, in literary debates over novelty versus return to the classical antiquity and on the emerging perception of England as a world trading capital. Tensions between the illusory and the tangible, the mundane and the domestic are woven into Pope's satires, centering on the chaos of the material world, which forms a central target of Pope's attacks on his contemporary world, in turn mocking of those who buy [sometimes literally] excessively. in his false sincerity or his promises. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Rape of the Pope's Lock is often called a "mock epic", or a "satirical burlesque" by Seidel for example, who describes the mode as "a surrogate literary program, a way of rearticulating a important part of any culture's reevaluation of its literary heritage. For writers of Pope's time, this notion of "legacy" was largely centered on the classical writers of the Augustan period, Homer being the one from whom Pope drew inspiration for his satire. However, to assert this, or to characterize Pope's work as epic "mockery" or "burlesque", implies that the epic itself is the locus of his satire, when in fact it is quite the opposite which is true. Despite claims that his works "do violence to Homer's passages, falsifying them", it seems clear that Pope's body of work, including a translation of Homer's Iliad, strongly implies his respect for the ancient poet: “He was a father of knowledge”. , a Soul capable of traversing all Creation with an intellectual Sight, radiating alone […] leaving behind a Work adorned with the Knowledge of its own Time […] A Work which will always stand at the summit of the sublime Character'[.] Pope's admiration for the poet's work is clear in his description as standing "at the height of the sublime character", and far from mockery, this passage illuminates Pope's desire to imitate the role of Homer. He sees it as "capable of traversing all creation", producing a "work adorned with the knowledge of its age", a position Pope attempts to achieve, while Seidel describes the Dunciad as "a monumental example of how The scope of satire expanded in the early 18th century to absorb virtually everything that modern society could display and produce. By assuming this same role and absorbing theepic conventions that he so admires, the satirical nature of Pope's works arises from the changing scope of what "society can display and produce", making his own world disappointing in comparison to that of the epic. The notion of “prizes” or “trophies” is a motivation in The Dunciad and The Rape of the Lock for example, but as the Trojan War unfolds for Helen, the woman prized enough to “launch a thousand ships,” the "price" of concern in the rape of the lock seems barely a quarter of its value, like a simple lock of hair: "This nymph, for the destruction of humanity,/nurtured two locks which hung gracefully behind »[.][Canto II, 19-20] “These two lines function in a manner very similar to the chronology of Pope's work after that of Homer; the "destruction of humanity" in line 19 arouses anticipation of something terrible or disastrous, but they are met in the next line with the image of two strands of hair, hanging benevolently and "gracefully" at the head of the Lady. This is an example of the classic hyperbole and sense of inflation that Pope proliferates throughout the poem as he exposes the concerns of the poem's characters as hysterical and excessive. By this same method, Pope plays on the anxieties of his time and his legacy in history, by substituting a powerful warrior and his weapon with Belinda and her body: "Now face your destiny," cried Belinda angrily, " /And drew a deadly master key on his side./(The same one, his old character on the bridge,/His great-great-grandfather wore it around his neck,/[…]Formed a vast loop for the his widow's dress […] Then in a sleight of hand 'd her mother's hair/How long she wore, and now Belinda wears it The warrior's weapons Here again Pope employs hyperbole, reducing one. powerful weapon to a "bodkin", a kind of needle that is incapable of inflicting "deadly" blows. feeling of loss in thinking about the classical epic and, more importantly, an exaggerated perception of small material goods like being important or powerful While the items of weaponry attributed to Homer's warriors leave them with a legacy of heroism, Pope expresses ridicule for frivolous items. ] Belinda and her recent ancestors are remembered by, in all cases here being merely decorative, worn "around the neck" or adorning "her mother's hair." Satirizing a real incident, Pope shapes a perspective around the closed, civilized world his characters live in, and his Homeric framework both expresses the pettiness of their argument, but also mocks the habit of making sensationalism and placing excessive confidence in objects of little real importance. I have analyzed specific objects of ridicule in Pope's satire, what has not yet been addressed is the massive proliferation of material things in his work. The Rape of the Lock is ornate, decorated with objects, illustrated by Belinda's toilet which draws a parallel with the collection of curiosities of a virtuoso: "Here rows of pins extend their brilliant rows,/Puffs, Powders , Patches, Bible, Billet-doux./Now the horrible Beauty puts all her arms" [Canto I, 137-142] In an almost sacrilegious manner, the "bible" is mixed carelessly among the "puffs" and the "powders" of Belinda as if they had equal value. It is here that an opposition appears where we see that not only are petty objects inflated to false values, but that important things are neglected. In The Dunciad, this complaint is at the center of Pope's attack on the proliferation of print culture which, he argues, brought a "new wind of commercial and material order to England" as writing became heavilyinvolved in economic capital. In this epic parody, he again appropriates part of Homer's work in the form of heroic couplets, but also structurally, since we see the goddess of boredom in "war" with reason, and darkness at war with light. Much like in Rape of The Lock, the framing device presents the “war” in The Dunciad as being waged for nefarious ends. Pope mourns the lost purity of writing as the figures and tropes of Homer's epic multiply and become distorted or excessive. Homer's Hera, for example, who is described as having cow's eyes, becomes an ugly "Juno of majestic stature, / With cow's udders and ox's eyes" [Book II, 155-6] in Pope's work. We see two different types of "excess" appear between The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad, where in the former, Homer's heroic style applied to the argument makes it seem excessive and exaggerated, using this to mock the treatment of small commodities as precious and worldly goods, and in the latter, elements of Homer's work are directly amplified and multiplied to ugly proportions in order to condemn writers he deems muddying the waters of literary sphere. With the rise of printing culture and the expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695, Pope saw the literary sphere as overrun with bad writers and bad work, seeking only money rather than the purity that he finds in Homer's work: "Now a thousand tongues are heard in a great din:/The apes-imitates rush in discordance;/It was chattering, smiling, articulating, jab'ring all,And Noise and Norton, Brangling and Brevall,Dennis and Dissonance, and Captive Art'[.] [Book II, 227-231] The alliterative turns must be covered here, as the lines move quickly from "t" sounds to "n" and " b,” which makes it a mouthful to read, especially out loud. On this point of reader difficulty in the poem, Aubrey L. Williams surmises that "the materials of story and personality are so important, and sometimes so unassimilated, that the organizing principles and central themes of the poem struggle sometimes painfully through the mass of details, if at all.” Although this appears as a criticism of Pope's style, this confusion or struggle can usefully be seen as a deliberate stylistic excess, used as part of the poem's emphasis on the overpopulation of the literary world, reflecting the way in which he perceives his own literary world as a chattering “mass” of bad work. The Pope views the "thousand tongues" as negative, strongly defending Dryden's succinct decree: "Learn to write well, or not to write at all", and suggesting that for a remembered age it is best to have a competent “language”. like Homer producing one great work rather than a "thousand" of poor quality works, as he saw in his contemporary world "little hope of maintaining the principles and standards of literature, largely derived from the classical past" "[.] Looking at the depictions of excess in both satires, Barbara Benedict's notion that "the material replaces the moral" seems particularly apt, for it is not simply that the "trophies" or the valuables from Homer's Iliad had degenerated into meager strands of hair. , but also that the material elements of things were excessively examined, denying moral good or satisfaction. For example, Pope launches his attack at one point in The Dunciad against Sir Thomas Handmer, who edited Shakespeare in exceptionally ornate editions: “The decent knight retired with sober rage, / 'What! none.