Dreams

The epic is a narrative poem of supposed divine inspiration treating of a subject of great and momentous importance for mankind, the characters of the story are partly human and partly divine, and the language and style in which the incidents are related are full of elevation and dignity. If a long narrative poem should satisfy all the tests of epic poetry, but if the subject which is celebrated be of a trivial nature, like the cutting off a lock of a woman’s hair, which is the story that is related in Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”, then such a poem is called a mock-epic. A mock-epic poem is supposed to be the inspiration of a Muse and the language is stilted and grandiose, but the subject is of very frivolous and of commonplace nature. Mock-epic or mock-heroic or heroi-comical terms are applied to literary works in which the epic or heroic tradition is ridiculed. Characteristics of “The Rape of the Lock” as a mock-epic poem: 1. Parody: Hazlitt has call

In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. Clearly the seventeenth century had the courage of its metaphors and they made them the organic parts of its staple, imposed them on the nearest and the farthest things with equal vigour as clearly as the nineteenth century lacked this courage and was half- heartedly metaphorical or content with similes. The difference between the literary qualities of the two periods is not the difference in degree between poets. It is something which had happened to the mind of England between the Age of Donne, Crashaw, Lord Herbert and the time of Tennyson and Browning. It is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective poet. Tennyson and Browning are the poets who think, but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience, it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is equipped perfectly for its w