Homework
Wednesday – Johnson & Boswell (text book pages 570-588)
As we go through today’s lesson – look for my thesis of the
lesson. I will ask you at the end of the class what you think it is.
Alexander Pope
And if the Babe is born a Boy�He's given to a Woman old, �Who nails him down upon a rock, �Catches his shrieks in cups of gold
William Blake (the epigraph to Grendel)
Alexander Pope: Grievous Disability and Inspired Writing by Lauren Riddell
Alexander Pope was labelled as ‘the most notorious hunchback of the 18th century’ and a ‘hump-backed toad’ by those he satirised in his writings.1 His physical disabilities were not only a defining feature of his public persona but also inherently influenced both the style and content of his writing.��Pope suffered from Pott’s disease, leaving him with a curvature of the spine which stunted his growth at 4ft6in and rendered him a frail hunchback.2 He was also burdened with asthma, insomnia, headaches and an eye ailment.3��
Alexander Pope: Grievous Disability and Inspired Writing by Lauren Riddell
Pope rarely referred to his disabilities in his writing. In The Club of Little Men (1713), he describes the ridiculous rituals of a group of short men, providing a self-mocking and humorous insight into being of small stature.4 In another work, his Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735), he briefly details his flaws, writing ‘I cough like Horace, and tho lean, am short’.5��Pope’s experience of living with his disability was probably the source of his sharp wit and provocative criticism, exemplified in his mock-epic The Dunciad (1713).6 Pope uses the poem to attack contemporary figures who criticised his work, such as the poet laureate Colley Cibber. He crowns Cibber as the King of Dunces, and accuses him of having ‘less human genius than God gives an ape’.7��
During the turbulent 18th century, disability was ‘something over which the individual sufferer triumphs’.9 Pope did not triumph over his disability, but rather lived alongside it, drawing inspiration for his writing successes.
Alexander Pope: Grievous Disability and Inspired Writing by Lauren Riddell
Alexander Pope
Yet malice never was his aim;�He lashed the vice, but spared the name. �His satire points at no defect,�But what all mortals may correct....�He spared a hump, or crooked nose,�Whose owners set not up for beaux.
Jonathan Swift – on himself and his writing…
Another quote by Jonathan Swift
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Jonathan Swift
His book was relentlessly rejected – 19 years after his death his mother and the writer Walker Percy got it accepted by Louisana State University and the following year it was given the Pulitizer Prize for Literature and is now accepted as one of the greatest American Novels ever written.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1 - epigraph
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
(Martial, Epigrams 12.84)
"I was unwilling, Belinda, to ravish your locks;
but I rejoice to have conceded this to your prayers"��
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1
1 What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
2 What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1
5 Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1
7 Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
8 A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle?
9 O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd,
10 Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1 - epigraph
41 Know then, unnumber'd spirits round thee fly,
42 The light militia of the lower sky;
43 These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
44 Hang o'er the box, and hover round the Ring.
45 Think what an equipage thou hast in air,
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1
109 I saw, alas! some dread event impend,
110 Ere to the main this morning sun descend,
111 But Heav'n reveals not what, or how, or where:
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 1
145 The busy Sylphs surround their darling care;
146 These set the head, and those divide the hair,
gown;
148 And Betty's prais'd for labours not her own.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 2
11 Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
12 Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 2
15 Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
16 Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
17 If to her share some female errors fall,
18 Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 2
29 Th' advent'rous baron the bright locks admir'd;
30 He saw, he wish'd, and to the prize aspir'd.
31 Resolv'd to win, he meditates the way,
32 By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;
33 For when success a lover's toil attends,
34 Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends.
The Rape of the Lock
Pg. 322 Canto 3
1 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
2 Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
3 There stands a structure of majestic frame,
4 Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
5 Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
6 Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
7 Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
8 Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
bathos: an intentional descent in
Literature when, stating to be pathetic
or passionate or elevated, the writer
overshoots the mark and droops into the
trivial or the ridiculous.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 3
125 But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
126 How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
127 Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace
128 A two-edg'd weapon from her shining case;
129 So ladies in romance assist their knight
130 Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 3
151 Fate urg'd the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain,
152 (But airy substance soon unites again).
153 The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
154 From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 3
155 Then flash'd the living lightning from her eyes,
156 And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies.
157 Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,
last,
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 3
161 "Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,"
162 The victor cried, "the glorious prize is mine!
The Rape of the Lock
line 211 – pg 323 Canto 4
211 Oh had I rather unadmired remained
In some lone isle, or distant northern land;…
215 There kept my charms concealed from mortal
eye,
Like roses that in deserts bloom and die.
Like roses that in deserts bloom and die.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 4
76 Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease:
77 Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin;
78 That single act gives half the world the spleen."
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 4
126 He first the snuffbox open'd, then the case,
127 And thus broke out--"My Lord, why, what the devil?
128 Z {-}ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
129 Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, pox!
130 Give her the hair"--he spoke, and rapp'd his box.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 4
173 Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal shears demands
174 And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands.
175 Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
176 Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
1 She said: the pitying audience melt in tears,
2 But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears.
3 In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
4 For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
15 How vain are all these glories, all our pains,
16 Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains:
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
grace:
18 'Behold the first in virtue, as in face!'
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
19 Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
20 Charm'd the smallpox, or chas'd old age away;
produce,
22 Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
25 But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,
26 Curl'd or uncurl'd, since locks will turn to grey,
27 Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
28 And she who scorns a man, must die a maid;
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall
“The Nymph’s Reply” Sir Walter Raleigh
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
31 And trust me, dear! good humour can prevail,
scolding fail.
[Malcolm Gladwell] “I said I laughed out loud the first time I saw that sketch, but the second time I saw it, I didn't laugh at all.”
[Israeli satirist] “That's what we are aiming for in a lot of our sketches. It appears to be funny and then it sinks in and you think about it once more and then you, maybe, something will touch you and you feel the pain that, you know, driven us to, to, to write that. The fundamental truth, when you think about it, is kind of sad.” (from “The Satire Paradox” Malcolm Gladwell)
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
33 Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
soul."
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
87 "Now meet thy fate", incens'd Belinda cried,
88 And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
123 But trust the Muse--she saw it upward rise,
124 Though mark'd by none but quick, poetic eyes:
withdrew,
126 To Proculus alone confess'd in view)
127 A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
128 And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.
The Rape of the Lock
Canto 5
143 Not all the tresses that fair head can boast
144 Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
145 For, after all the murders of your eye,
146 When, after millions slain, yourself shall die:
147 When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,
148 And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,
149 This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame
150 And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare (Sonnet 18)
What follows is a bit off my thesis – so what do you see as�the thesis of this lesson?
The Rape of the Lock
Alexander Pope was already shunned by much of�British Society – for his humble background, his�physical defects, and his earlier writings. “The Rape of the Lock” resulted in his further alienation,
and being ostracized from the society that he often
so desperately wanted to be a part of.
“Satire works best when the satirist has the courage not just to go for the joke…. nothing of �consequence gets accomplished without courage. The path to a better world is hard.” � Malcolm Gladwell
A modern parallel
From “Capote’s Swan Dive” Vanity Fair Magazine
December 2012
La Côte Basque 1965,” the first installment of Truman Capote’s planned novel, Answered Prayers, dropped like a bomb on New York society when it appeared in Esquire’s November 1975 issue. Iced out by the friends he’d skewered—such of his “swans” as Slim Keith, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Babe Paley—Capote began his slide into an early grave.
“Never have you heard such gnashing of teeth, such cries for revenge, such shouts of betrayal and screams of outrage.”
“What did they expect? I’m a writer, and I use everything. Did all those people think I was there just to entertain them?” Truman Capote