The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Pope, Alexander. “The Rape of the Lock.” Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9800/9800-h/9800-h.htm

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotation are taken.

Alexander Pope was born to two Catholic parents in England in 1688, in the midst of a centuries-long conflict over whether England would be a Catholic nation or a Protestant one. He and his family faced significant anti-Catholic sentiment throughout his childhood. He also suffered from Potts disease, which left him with a hunchback and other physical deformities. Because of bias against both Catholics and people with disabilities, Pope led a challenging life, excluded from formal education and society. He never married. However, he was well-liked by other writers of his era and many of his poems were extraordinarily popular. He was known as a satirist, with a sharp wit that he turned on many of the most vaunted figures of his day. His work has mostly fallen out of fashion due to its intense focus on the political and cultural concerns of his own day. However, he is still one of the most quoted authors in English.

"The Rape of the Lock" is Pope's most famous work. Written in the form of a mock-epic, it satirizes the tradition of epic poetry and themes of romance and consumerism. In the poem, a suitor cuts a lock of hair from the head of a noblewoman named Belinda. This small act is interpreted as a major assault, and it mobilizes an entire cast of godly characters who come to Belinda's aid. With each canto (a single section of a long narrative poem), "The Rape of the Lock" makes use of epic and heroic literary conventions to draw attention to its own absurdity.