Answer:
In the Rape of the Lock Pope explains
that “machinery” is a term
invented by the critics to signify the part which deities, angles, or demons
play in a poem.
As in
the Iliad, the supernatural has a part to play in this
mock-epic poem. In the Iliad,it is gods and goddesses who
interact with and help their favorites, such as Achilles. In The
Rape of the Lock, Belinda is watched over not by a god or
goddess but by a guardian spirit, Ariel, who tries to warn her of coming danger
and who appoints a host of sylphs to protect her. Later, Umbriel takes over
from Ariel, but neither spirit is able to save her from losing a lock of her
hair.
Having worried spirits trying to protect Belinda from the fate
of having a lock of her hair cut by an admirer highlights how silly Belinda's
"plight" is. The truly heroic warriors of ancient Greece and Troy
needed divine protection and guidance, as their lives were at stake, but
Belinda is not going to die or even suffer any pain or permanent damage from
losing some hair. She hardly needs to be hovered over by sylphs and worried
spirits.
Since Pope's
"The Rape of the Lock" is a mock epic, the poet includes supernatural
machinery in this poem, but parodies it by having the beautiful women return to
the elements from which they came as anything but the elevated creatures
such as the gods and angels that true epics employ.
The violent
tempered women, or termagants, return as salamanders, or spirit of the fire;
the women of pleasing dispositions return as nymphs, or water
spirits; prudish women become gnomes, or earth spirits; coquettes,
or light-hearted women comes as sylphs, or spirits of the air.
It is in their occupations that Pope employs his satire,
too. The sylphs, for example, protect the chaste maidens from falling
victim to the "treacherous friends" of the male sex. While the
gnomes fill the minds of young maidens with foolish ideas, teaching them to
ogle the men and pretend to blush, the sylphs safely guide the maidens through
all the dangers.
0 Comments