Andre Churchwell The Second English-Satire 4/15/08
What If? : Andre Decides to Read “The Rape of the Lock”?
It seems that to understand what is going on in the first Canto you have to know a great deal, not even about the incident between Arabelle Fermor and Lord Petre but the Homer-isms that are abound. The hundreds of references to Greek mythology would normally have this reader scrambling to reference websites but seeing as this is an satire class there is a need to see the text for more than just what it meant to reference and what the reader believes is referenced. For the most part, I have no clue. When a passage mentions “The silver Token, and the circled Green,” I think of how three female characters from this poem eventually get named after three moons of Uranus, Belinda, Umbriel, and Ariel. The constant reference of sky and sun perhaps got the discoverer, William Lassell, of said moons to think of this poem when he found them. The lines:
” While Peers and Dukes, and all their sweeping Train, And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear,” reminds me of Dr. Hank McCoy’s use of the phrase in all his incarnations as the mutant and mutant activist Beast from the X-Men. It struck me that he uses “My stars and garters” as an exclamation but could also tie into his love of Victorian literature, for in The Rape of the Lock the story seems to illustrate that one should not judge people on the acts they do on face-value as many machinations are at play within that one act. The act in TROTL is cutting a lock of hair while the act for Hank McCoy would probably be hatred of his kind.
He teaches a history class...while upside down...with glasses on.
Q: The Rape of the Lock is an old poem but are there any references in it that transcend it’s time period? (I named a few already)
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