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- [00:19]
Angelina Stanford
This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and here with me is a man who has never cut my hair.
- [01:37]
Thomas Banks
No, no, we haven't crossed that bridge yet.
- [01:39]
Angelina Stanford
No, I know better.
- [01:40]
Thomas Banks
Even for fun? Yeah, for fun.
- [01:42]
Angelina Stanford
I knew better than to leave sharpened.
- [01:43]
Thomas Banks
That wasn't my first move. Wasn't. Yeah.
- [01:46]
Angelina Stanford
That's our romantic meet. Cute, right? I saw her from across the room and then I snipped her ponytail off.
- [01:53]
Thomas Banks
Well, it does happen in real life.
- [01:55]
Angelina Stanford
We will find out it does. As we will find out. We are going to be talking, if you haven't figured it out already, about Alexander Pope's mock heroic epic, the Rape of the Lock. And as we said last week, rape does not mean what you think it means. It means the kidnapping of or the
- [02:11]
Thomas Banks
theft from Latin rappere to seize or snatch.
- [02:15]
Angelina Stanford
There you go. So famous paintings like the Rape of the Sabine Women is actually about the kid. The Kidnapping of the Sabine Women. So again, it's one of the things I talk about a lot in my classes. C.S. lewis calls them false friends. He says it's not the words in old books that we don't know that give us trouble. It's the words that we think we know that give us trouble. Yeah, and. And this would be one of those. So, yes, we're going to talk about Alexander Pope's the Rape of the Lock. Last week, if you missed it, we did an introduction to neoclassical poetry as a whole and introduced us to Alexander Pope, as well as Swift and Dryden and some of the other big names, Samuel Johnson, Addison and Steel of the time period. So. But today we'll be focusing on that. But before we get started, a word from our sponsor. Us. We are the House of Humane Letters. The Literary Life podcast is a production of the House of Humane Letters. And the courses we offer give you a chance to go deeper, if you so desire. As well as continue to support the podcast. And let us bringing bring this podcast to you free of charge with no ads. This is a completely member supported podcast and many, many people say to me that the podcast is like a, like a free college class and that means a lot to me. So your support in purchasing webinars and things like that go a long way with keeping us coming to you. All right, so we just had a fabulous webinar last night with Jen Rogers on the Pilgrim's Regress. If you missed that, you can grab the recording of that in our store@houseofhumaneletters.com but I've got to tell you about the exciting thing we've got coming up in May. Heather Good Goodman, Let me tell you, there's a whole story here. We just see people all the time talking in the various homeschool forums with questions about the book Mary Poppins. What is going on here? This is a crazy book. How should I let my child read this? This seems immoral. This is bad. And every time it comes up, Heather's face would turn bright red and say she's they're reading it wrong, they're reading it wrong. And so finally I just asked her, would you like to do a webinar on Mary Poppins and just set the record straight? And she jumped at it. So here's the description for May's webinar on Mary Poppins. This is going to be May 27th at 7pm but like everything we do, this will be live or later. So you can pick it up and watch it at your ease. But how's this to wet your whistle? Mary Poppins, Venus in a blue coat with silver buttons. P.L. travers wrote myths come it is true, from the ancient past. But it is no less true that they, like the traditions around which they gather, are constantly being rediscovered, renewed and restated. Enter Mary Poppins, part goddess, part Celtic warrior Fae, full time nanny with a parrot umbrella like Venus, pulling aside the veil to reveal the work of the gods to Aeneas, Mary Poppins comes to give the banks an education so that their eyes may be open to the spiritual world in their everyday. And we as readers get to go along for the merry go round ride. In this webinar, Heather Goodman will look at some of the ingredients that went into the Mary Poppins soup. From Persian and Asian myths to Grimm's fairy tales to Dante, will trace motifs throughout the Mary Poppins books that echo the universal story, including in the hard to understand chapter Full Moon where Jane and Michael visit the midnight zoo and see how Travers was restorying the cosmos and turning England right side up.
- [05:49]
Thomas Banks
I'm told that so many banks need to have their eyes opened.
- [05:53]
Angelina Stanford
You know, when I told my students, the, the middle school students about the Mary Poppins women are, they all kept saying, you're Mary Poppins. You're Mary Poppins, Ms. Angelina. And Mr. Banks is Mr. Banks. And I was like, kind of. Yeah.
- [06:05]
Thomas Banks
Isn't Mr. Banks kind of odious?
- [06:08]
Angelina Stanford
No, he's like, cutely stuffy. Okay, like you.
- [06:10]
Thomas Banks
We'll go with that.
- [06:11]
Angelina Stanford
He's cutely stuffy. He's not. Oh, yes. How dare you. All right, that's going to be May 27th. That's going to be fantastic. And really, her whole idea that we're going to have the veil pull back and see the machinations of the gods, which is what goes on in the Aeneid. It kind of goes on in this poem, too.
- [06:26]
Thomas Banks
Yes, it does.
- [06:27]
Angelina Stanford
In the Rape of the Law. All right, well, let's start with our commonplace quotes before we jump in. What do you have for me, Mr.
- [06:33]
Thomas Banks
So I have a passage from Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets that, from the chapter on Alexander Pope. And by the way, if you want to read something about Alexander Pope, I would recommend beginning with Samuel Johnson's pages on him in that, in that Lives of the Poets, which is one of the best things Samuel Johnson ever wrote, I think. So Samuel Johnson, who is very sympathetic to Pope as a writer, and he valued his taste, his work ethic, and he just saw him as kind of the consummate professional in verse. He writes thus. Pope's publications were, for the same reason, never hasty. He is said to have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under his inspection. It is at least certain that he ventured nothing without nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside and the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew that the mind is always enamored of its own productions and did not trust his first fondness. He consulted his friends and listened with great willingness to criticism. And what was of more importance, he consulted himself and let nothing pass against his own judgment. So he had the faculty of invention, but even more important, he had the faculty of judgment, which is very Augustine, I would say.
- [07:59]
Angelina Stanford
Those are two neoclassical virtues. By judgment, they mean discernment based on
- [08:05]
Thomas Banks
the best modern and ancient examples.
- [08:07]
Angelina Stanford
That's right.
- [08:08]
Thomas Banks
And Samuel Johnson said he had all the best of the moderns and ancients at his fingertips.
- [08:12]
Angelina Stanford
Exactly so. And this is actually both of those Things, judgment, meaning, discernment and taste are big, big parts of Jane Austen's work.
- [08:20]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yes, absolutely right.
- [08:21]
Angelina Stanford
Many of the characters have to learn how to properly discern the characters of people, for example. So, yeah, she. I fully think she's a neoclassical writer. My quote comes from a book, and I should have checked to see if it's still in print. The last I checked, this was not still in print, but like, they had made maybe a Kindle version of it. But look at ABE books or thrift books and see if you can find. This is an interesting book that I come back to a lot. It's called Reading the classics with C.S. lewis. And it's an anthology of literature written by a number of different scholars. Each chapter covers a different time period, and they sort of summarize all the places that Lewis wrote about that author or that time period and gives you an overview. And. And then, of course, it gives you the bibliography of where you can find where he wrote about these things. And, yeah, it's something I turn to often. So I turned to the section on 18th century literature, and you can see I'm. It's all marked up with notes because he was a big fan of Jonathan Swift, and I pull from this stuff when I teach Gulliver's Travels. So before I tell you what he said about the Rape of the Lock, it's interesting that in general. And this really tracks. Okay, so we talked about how they're neoclassical, but I think I. We didn't get into it a ton, but we alluded to the fact that maybe their understanding of the classics was not really, you know, correct. That's the point C.S. lewis makes about it, that so many of the things that they were writing don't have anything to do with the classical authors. He says that they seem to be mostly interested in wit, and that wit does not form a big part of Greek drama.
- [10:00]
Thomas Banks
This is entirely true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not. Not the great tragedians and. And even Aristophanes, though Aristophanes is a brilliant comic writer. He's not a brilliant comic writer in the way that the 18th century would have found necessarily most tasteful, not witty,
- [10:17]
Angelina Stanford
comedy of manners, you know, drawing room wit kind of stuff. That's the 18th century. Right? Again, think. Think Jane Austen. Think of her sly irony. But he does have a great love for Rape of the Lock. And here's a small quote. So he calls Rape of the Locke a perfect and never obsolete period piece.
- [10:43]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, that's. I think that's a very fitting tribute, actually. You know, C.S. lewis doesn't write about the 18th century very often, but when he does, he does so with, I think, yeah, powerful, powerful keenness of observation. And there's actually an essay of his. It's in his Selected Literary Essays on Addison and there might be one or two other pieces as well out there. But, yeah, I much appreciate his thoughts on that period and I wish there were more of them.
- [11:16]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, it wasn't really his field, but he definitely, when he pops in, he always says something astute and keen and.
- [11:22]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, I mean, Lewis is like, it's impossible to exhaust what he knew about books. And every student of his, like, who went in for his tutoring session would find out that however much I have read about this period, Lewis has read the third and fourth rate authors whom no one has ever heard of, except maybe him and two other guys.
- [11:44]
Angelina Stanford
No, at the time of his death, he was considered the best read man in the whole world.
- [11:49]
Thomas Banks
That's not unbelievable.
- [11:51]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, yeah, he'd read everything. And as far as the 18th century, Jonathan Swift is the biggest influence on his writings. If you read Gulliver's Travels, you'll see much of those ideas recirculate through the space trilogy. And like, even with Jane Austen, he. He never wrote like a formal essay on it, but he's got. There is one called. In one of the collections called, like, Notes on Jane Austen. And it's just notes and. But they're very, very astute. Yeah, yeah, they're quite astute.
- [12:20]
Thomas Banks
One of those few literary essays you wished longer.
- [12:22]
Angelina Stanford
All right, well, we're going to talk about the Rape of the Lock, which honestly had me laughing out loud.
- [12:28]
Thomas Banks
No, it's just a delightful, really delightful piece. And it doesn't pretend to be other than trivial. And that kind of gives it some of its charm.
- [12:36]
Angelina Stanford
Exactly. So I want to talk about satire first of all. Let's start there. There's a few different kinds of satire. With formal satire, you typically have them falling into two categories based on two different Roman authors, or Horus and juvenile. Take us through the basics of Horatian satire. And juvenile.
- [12:52]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, so Horatian satire is urbane and kind of forgiving. So here's my. There's one of Horace's satires. Horace was one of the great poets of the age of Augustus Caesar, contemporary with Virgil and Ovid. And there's one of his poems where he's walking down the sacred way and he runs into a boar, the. The boringest man in Rome, who starts fatiguing him with questions about his Health and things like that. And Horus starts trying to invent all of these ways to get out of this. To get out of this, you know, conversation which he wanted to end before it began. And that's, that's about this, the sum of Horus's malevolence. It's not a mean spirited poem at all, but it's. It actually feels kind of contemporary because quite frankly, all of us probably have some person in our life, our community, who, when you meet them, you start inventing excuses for how to get away from this, this little polite exchange. And that's. So Horace is like that. I mean, he points out human foibles, but none of his satire, most of his major satires anyway, don't deal with real, real evils that are being laid under the knife. Juvenile is more the man for that. Juvenile is much more like Jonathan Swift. In fact, he and Jonathan Swift is always being, always being compared since. Since I think even Swift might have compared himself to juvenile. But juvenile will attack decadent and corrupt and powerful evil in high place. He was also very. A very prejudiced man. I think this might have given him a lot of. A lot of kindling for his, for his wit. And yeah, he attacked everything under the sun. Not at all. Not at all.
- [14:43]
Angelina Stanford
Well, I always, in my classes, I always explain the difference is like Horatian satire is almost like an inside joke where we're making fun of ourselves, but it's not mean spirited.
- [14:53]
Thomas Banks
No. Whereas Juvenilian satire actually wishes hurt.
- [14:56]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, yes, it is me.
- [14:58]
Thomas Banks
Or humiliation. And Alexander Swift, Alexander Pope wrote both kinds of satire. This is much more Horatian though.
- [15:06]
Angelina Stanford
Right, Right. Like Babylon Be satires about how Church spends 12 hours singing one verse of a hymn. Like, that's, that's us kind of laughing at our own foibles and follies and kind of just like, no, that's true. We can be like that. And that's very different than maybe somebody from another religion, like viciously kind of attacking Christianity. It's that sort of thing.
- [15:26]
Thomas Banks
The example I use of Horatian satire, and this doesn't work if you're a younger person, but if you're of a certain age. Johnny Carson, when he did impressions, like when he did impressions of President Reagan or whatever, you didn't get the impression that he actually wished these people were dead and like in a ditch or something. That would be an example of Horatian satire.
- [15:45]
Angelina Stanford
So I want to talk a little bit about the function of satire because it functions a little differently than the other types of literature. You've heard us on this podcast many times talk about not having a didactic approach and not reading to sort of try to extract a moral lesson. But satire works a little differently than that because satire is very deliberately trying to bring to attention some kind of foible or folly about being a human.
- [16:10]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. Pointing to some either lesser or graver fault that attends the human comedy.
- [16:16]
Angelina Stanford
You can be light like in Rape of the Lock, or light like in the example I gave about we're going to kind of make fun of. I remember There was this YouTube video way long time ago, but it was really funny because it was a video about how to plan the perfect Christian devotional Instagram post. And it was. It was very, very funny. It was all about, you know, the perfect mug and your Bible has to be open and the perfect pen and a flower. And basically.
- [16:40]
Thomas Banks
Yes, that's right.
- [16:41]
Angelina Stanford
Basically, at the end of the video, it was like, I took my picture, but I didn't have any time to actually read the Bible because the whole time was staging. And it was the kind of like, we're just gonna laugh at ourselves kind of silly thing. And you wouldn't say that. It's heavy didacticism. It's not like, at the end of that, you're like, oh, I'm gonna go repent that I'm frivolous. But it's a medieval idea that if you can laugh at yourself, it restores proportion. And I think that Horatian satire work, like, in the moments where we see ourselves and see that, you know, we can be kind of ridiculous and you laugh at yourself. You know, that's. That is the didactic lesson. Right. I mean, if you're a homeschooler, homeschoolers have jokes about. We're just awkward homeschoolers. Right. Like, we make fun of that all the time. And it's just. It restores proportion. It helps you to keep yourself from thinking too seriously. But juvenile satire can be a lot more didactic. I would say that Jonathan Swift is not delighting in, Ha, look how silly we are. It's like, you know, stop being Enlightenment idiots. You know, his satire is a lot more directed on the almost unimaginable optimism that the Enlightenment has for the perfect ability of mankind. For example, he does not believe that is going to happen. He believes that that's a dangerous idea. He's poking fun at it to hopefully you know, kind of wake us up out of the Enlightenment drunkenness. We find ourselves. The stupor we find ourselves in on optimism, that kind of thing. But when it comes to satire, there is going to be a certain amount of didacticism. And so you should expect that there is in this poem as well. But that's not like, oh, no, they're violating all the rules of literature. No, they're writing according to their form. This is. This is the form of satire. Now, in terms of shape, because satire is both a form and a mode. If you want to go Northrop Fry here, the satire shape is going to be in relation to the other. Other shapes. So for this. But this is going to be, as we're going to talk about in just second, it's a satirical epic. So it's going to follow the Thorman shape of the epic, but it's going to be flipping some things upside down. There's a lot of variations there. But it doesn't have. The. Satire doesn't have its own shape. So we have the comedy shape. We have the tragedy shape, the U and the upside down. You. That you've heard us talk about so many times on this podcast. The satire will kind of have its own thing. Yeah. So that's. That's the basics of satire. And there can be satirical elements in a work that, in the work itself is not satire. For example, you brought this up last week with Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre, Wow. No, we just finished doing Jane Eyre. Jane Austen. Jane Austen is not writing satire. She is writing comedy of manners. Okay. Except for Northanger Abbey. Northanger Abbey is an actual satire where she is satirizing the conventions of the Gothic novel. That's the form and the mode. Something like Pride and Prejudice. I've heard people say, well, isn't it a satire? And they'll point to things like, clearly, she's making fun of X, Y and Z. Well, no, it's a comedy of manners. It doesn't meet the definition of a satire form. But, like, Shyamala is a satire of the book Pamela. That's a satire. Pride and Prejudice can have satirical moments. So when the narrator is kind of sly and. I mean, clearly Mr. Collins is being made fun of. Clearly, he's almost a caricature of a person. You can point to that and say, yes, there are some satirical elements here, there are some satirical moments, but the whole thing is not a satire. The whole thing is not to point out the follies of being a human does that distinct. Helpful.
- [20:09]
Thomas Banks
I think it's helpful, yes.
- [20:10]
Angelina Stanford
It's always so hard when I'm just talking into the abyss in a class. I can see my kids, my students, all Be nodding their heads and I think, okay, I can move on. You got it. So, yeah, you can find satirical moments without it being an actual satire. Most satires are funny, although I guess they don't have to be animal forms as satire. I don't find that particularly funny.
- [20:30]
Thomas Banks
No, no, I don't think there's actually a single comic moment in that book.
- [20:34]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, most of them are fun.
- [20:36]
Thomas Banks
Like maybe. Maybe a bit of gallows humor with the slogans on the wall that keep changing and just the sheer hypocrisy of.
- [20:43]
Angelina Stanford
That's kind of funny.
- [20:44]
Thomas Banks
Some of those you do laugh out a bit, maybe. But, yeah, it's. It's such a. Such a tragic book that it's. Yeah, and that's another thing, actually. Satire, I'm thinking Roman satire in particular. I. I do not. I remember a professor of mine, may he rest in peace, Louis Perrault, telling me that. I remember I was reading Juvenile and not really enjoying it. He said, well, not all of Juvenile's satires are meant to be funny. Some of them are simply just savage venting of spleen. I mean, brilliant, you know, fiercely eloquent venting of spleen, but you're not really meant to laugh at much of it. I would say that some of the. Jonathan Swift is pretty consistently funny, I think, but even. But some of his poems. I think I mentioned the one about. Oh, that. That urban poem of his describing the city sewer. You don't laugh at that, really.
- [21:37]
Angelina Stanford
Like Rain in London. It's something.
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Thomas Banks
I think it's just a description of a city shower.
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Angelina Stanford
That's it?
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Thomas Banks
Yeah, that's it.
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Angelina Stanford
A description of a city shower.
- [21:45]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. And there are others as well, where. Yeah, you're kind of. I mean, it's memorably horrific, but you don't necessarily lightly giggle too much while reading it. This poem, though, the Rape of the Lock is much more. It's much more like. Reading it, I was thinking of some of Mozart's lighter operas, you know, like. Yeah, the Marriage of Figaro. Yeah, that's a kind of a. Kind of. There's a kind of sweetness here, a sort of sweet playfulness.
- [22:16]
Angelina Stanford
I agree, I agree. Okay. So in addition to it being a satire, the particular type. Type of satire it is, is a mock heroic epic. And we see that in the opening line here, the subtitle, the Rape of the Lot. A hero. A heroic comical poem. And part of the reason he's using that phrase, instead of saying straight up, this is a mock epic, was because when John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, he called It a heroic. A heroic poem, not an epic. Because, you know, I'm not Homer or Virgil or Dante, so I can't say I'm writing an epic. But this is a mock epic. So let's talk a little bit about what a mock epic is and its history. Go ahead.
- [22:57]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, well, it's. It's actually a much older type of poem than you might imagine. The oldest example of a mock heroic poem that we have is Greek, and the author of it is unknown. And it's the bracha miomachia. Don't ask me to spell that, which is the battle of the frogs and mice. And it's. It's obviously a nod to Homer, and it's a great martial epic of the clash of two civilizations trying to wipe each other out, except one of them is frogs and the other are mice. So you have little mice going to war. And the language is still Homeric. They're still speaking with all of this kind of rotom on Todd and these great sort of inflated speeches. So it's written in the Homeric register of language. But. But the fact that it's about little things is it adds to the comedy.
- [23:51]
Angelina Stanford
Now, are all Rape of the lock is a burlesque. Are all mock epics a burlesque of
- [23:58]
Thomas Banks
the ones I know? Yes. That's what I think, too, for the most part.
- [24:01]
Angelina Stanford
So you want to define a burlesque for our audience?
- [24:04]
Thomas Banks
Why don't you field that one?
- [24:05]
Angelina Stanford
Okay. Well, it is when you take a low subject and treat it high.
- [24:08]
Thomas Banks
Ah, yeah.
- [24:09]
Angelina Stanford
So it's basically upside down and very, very exaggerated language like we see in this poem.
- [24:17]
Thomas Banks
I. I guess to use, like, maybe, again, contemporary examples that might help people understand this is still with us. I would say in film, if you can think of a comic sports movie, because you have sincere sports movies, you actually like Rocky and Hoosiers and. But then, like, there are sports movies that are obviously dodgeball. Yeah, that kind of thing. Or what was the baseball movie with Charlie Sheen?
- [24:45]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, sorry.
- [24:46]
Thomas Banks
We just went from Alexander Pope to Charlie Sheen with a preview.
- [24:49]
Angelina Stanford
But yes, he's the picture with the glasses.
- [24:51]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. So that's. I would say it's still one of those things that we have with us, though. Maybe. Maybe film, you know, maybe the lower kinds of comedy use it more than. I can't think of any mock heroic literature recently.
- [25:05]
Angelina Stanford
We do have a tendency. Northrop Fry points this out. We've talked about this a lot on the podcast. We have a tendency to treat tragic subject matter as if it's higher art than comic. Yeah. And I don't, you know, that's.
- [25:18]
Thomas Banks
That seems an old human tendency, and
- [25:20]
Angelina Stanford
it's not true because it's much, much harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry. And there is nothing low, in my opinion of being witty with language, playing with language, playing with form. This is all part of what we do. It's play. Drama is. We call it a play, we call it a Shakespeare play because we are playing. We're playing with language, we're playing with words, we're playing with form.
- [25:43]
Thomas Banks
And before we begin also, I would say that though you do not have to read a thousand books to read this poem, you can read this poem and delight in it by itself. If, you know, if you are at least passingly familiar with some of the great epics of antiquity, Homer and Virgil, it will be all the funnier.
- [26:02]
Angelina Stanford
Yes.
- [26:02]
Thomas Banks
And even from the first dozen or so.
- [26:04]
Angelina Stanford
I want you to tell me more. I mean, I caught a lot, but. I know you will. But before we get into that, I do want to talk about what is a mock epic. So he's going to be taking not just the. So an epic. Let's start with different. Finding an epic. An epic is a poem, a long narrative poem. This is a long narrative poem, and it has, as it is treating a very high subject in the highest language. So you would not write an epic on something trivial. And here he is writing an epic on something trivial. So that's why it's mock heroic epic. But you're going to see all the parts of an epic. So you're going to have an invocation of the muse. You're going to. I laughed at the descent to Hades. That was adorable. You see, you're going to have all
- [26:46]
Thomas Banks
the things supernatural beings intervening in mortal.
- [26:48]
Angelina Stanford
Mortal affairs and taking it all so seriously, even the ascent to heaven at the end. But we can get to that in a minute. So you'll have all the different parts of the epic. Now, I thought this was really interesting that my introduction pointed out that. So despite the fact that it's the neoclassical period, the epic had really fallen out of fashion, and no one is writing epics. And the introduction to my book made the point that Pope number one really popularizes the mock epic, as this poem was very popular. And so then you have other writers writing them. But it also made the case that he sort of keeps the epic conventions alive at a time when they had really fallen out of fashion. And I thought it was really interesting, too.
- [27:33]
Thomas Banks
That's A good point.
- [27:34]
Angelina Stanford
That he writes the Rape of the Lock. Well, he writes it over several years. There are many drafts. We'll talk about the publication history of this. But he finishes it right before he starts his translation of the Iliad.
- [27:45]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, this is really one of his first major pieces. I think he was 24 when this. When this was published. So Fairly young man. Yeah.
- [27:53]
Angelina Stanford
Okay. So for there were several people on the Discord who were pointing out that their version had several different versions. Their version. Their edition had several different versions and several different dates. So he writes kind of a small version. Then he keeps coming back to it over several years and an introduction and a kind of a didactic ending. All right, well, we're going to be dealing with the very last version he did. So should we start with the letter to Arabella Fermor? You want to tell the story of how.
- [28:21]
Thomas Banks
The true story, so we don't need to read the whole thing out loud. But Arabella Fermor was a young woman, the young. She's the Belinda of this poem. And she was from a recusant Catholic family. And there was a young man, Lord Petrie, who took a romantic interest in her. He also came from a English Catholic family. And he cut a lock from her hair as an. I don't know, as a. As a gesture of his attachment to her, I suppose.
- [28:53]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, that guy doesn't understand women at all.
- [28:56]
Thomas Banks
And she didn't take very kindly to this. And this story was. Again, there are not very many Catholics in England. It was a small clique. But this story was repeated to Pope, who was a member of the same.
- [29:08]
Angelina Stanford
Between the two days.
- [29:10]
Thomas Banks
Yes, it did indeed.
- [29:10]
Angelina Stanford
Like a Romeo Juliet kind of feud, Fields and McCoys over this hair.
- [29:16]
Thomas Banks
And Alexander Pope's friend John Carroll repeated the story to him. And Pope took from it the inspiration for this poem. And Arabella Fermor, by the way, she knew that this poem was inspired by this misfortune which had befallen her. And evidently, she felt like she was 10 inches taller from having this. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This was like she peaked at however old she was. She became the queen bee. She became the queen bee. And it went to her head. Yeah, I. I don't know. I. I guess I would. I would think that Pope's treatment of Belinda in this poem wouldn't necessarily flatter most women. But again, I. I do not pretend to speak for the fair sex.
- [29:59]
Angelina Stanford
Not at all. Okay, so let's start. Because it starts with an epic invocation of the muse. Yeah, it's. Well, I'LL let you say what it is.
- [30:06]
Thomas Banks
So what dire offense from amorous causes springs. What mighty contests rise from trivial things. I sing this verse to Carol. Music is due. And this is the same Carol who told him about the story. This even Belinda may vouchsafe to view. Slight is the subject, but not so the praise. If she inspire and he approve my lays.
- [30:30]
Angelina Stanford
Okay, so this is obviously a riff on the opening to the Aeneid of men in arms.
- [30:35]
Thomas Banks
It's even more obvious in the next six lines. Say, what strange motive goddess could compel a well bred lord to assault a gentle bell? Oh, what strange. Oh, say what stranger calls yet unexplored could make a gentle bell reject a lord? In tasks so bold can little men engage, and in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage. And that last line classically educated readers will recognize as Tantai nanimis caelestibus irae does such anger comport with heavenly minds.
- [31:07]
Angelina Stanford
And that's from the aid.
- [31:09]
Thomas Banks
That's. Yeah, from the opening of the Aeneid.
- [31:11]
Angelina Stanford
And we should say too, that a lot of what he's doing here is comparing the kidnapping of her hair to the kidnapping of Helen of Troy.
- [31:18]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yeah, there's, there's. Yeah, and there's a lot of Homeric nods in this as well. And then one to a lesser known poem at the very end, which we'll, we'll get to in due course.
- [31:27]
Angelina Stanford
All right, keep going. Take us through there.
- [31:29]
Thomas Banks
All right. So it begins with her in bed, and her guardian sylph comes to her with a word of warning. And we should say what a sylph is because it's not necessarily a mythic creature a lot of people are familiar with. In fact, most people who have come across the word will have encountered it in this poem. So a sylph is one of the. One of the four principal types of elemental spirits. They're spirits, they're unsubstantial spirits of air, a kind of fairy, basically. And Pope would have known them probably from the 16th century author Paracelsus, who had written about them in one of his scientific or proto scientific treatises. And you might think, well, in the 18th century, do people still believe in fairies? We can say with certainty that Pope did not. But he's using them as, you could say, part of the charming mechanism of this poetry. They're there for decoration. They're sort of the literary parsley of this poem. But instead of great gods and goddesses coming down to shape mortal fates and destinies, you have these airy Insubstantial spirits who are warning our heroine, Belinda, against something that might befall her today. Beware of man.
- [32:57]
Angelina Stanford
So there's kind of a genealogy of the different aerial spirits around her. Is that almost like a mock epic catalog?
- [33:05]
Thomas Banks
Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, you. You have it exactly. So.
- [33:09]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, good, good. Again, another epic convention.
- [33:12]
Thomas Banks
So here is the sylph whispering to her. Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care A thousand bright inhabitants of air. If e' er one vision touched thy infant Thought of all the nurse and all the priest have taught of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen the silver token and the circled green or virgins visited by angel powers with golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers. Hear and believe thy own importance Know nor bound thy narrow views to things below Some secret truths from learned pride concealed to maids alone and children are revealed. What though no credit doubting wits may give, the fair and innocent shall still believe Know. Then, unnumbered spirits, round thee fly the light militia of the lower sky. These, though unseen, are ever on the wing. Hang o' er the box and hover round the ring and the box, referred to, of course, as the opera box. And it's a little bit ridiculous, this idea of attendant and guardian spirits, instead of guarding the heroine when she is traveling through dangerous woods or something, gartering her to the opera box or to the dancing floor.
- [34:28]
Angelina Stanford
At the same time, there's that interesting double. That. That actually is a world of dangers and intrigues.
- [34:34]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [34:34]
Angelina Stanford
And you do have to be at
- [34:35]
Thomas Banks
the More one where you need, like, a governess.
- [34:37]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. Agreed, agreed. I love how the dangers are. The flirts, the sparks.
- [34:45]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [34:46]
Angelina Stanford
So it's very Helen in Paris again. If you put this, I think, into the larger context, much of which we gave in the Jane Eyre series. This is around the same time that Henry Fielding is writing Pamela, which is all about girls.
- [34:59]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yeah. The temptations that befall young women.
- [35:01]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah.
- [35:02]
Thomas Banks
So this polite urban society, which is. Still. Still has. That's in Jane Austen of a kind. Yeah.
- [35:07]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah. So can you tell the line number before you start reading?
- [35:11]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, I don't have line numbers.
- [35:12]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, okay. I do. Never mind.
- [35:13]
Thomas Banks
All right, go ahead.
- [35:15]
Angelina Stanford
We're still in Canto 1.
- [35:16]
Thomas Banks
This is Canto 1. Yeah. Know. Then unnumbered spirits, round thee fly the light militia of the lower sky. These, though unseen, are ever on the wing. Hang o' er the box and hover round the ring. Think what an equipage thou hast in air and view with scorn two pages and a chair, as now Your own our beings were of old, and once enclosed in woman's beauteous mould. Thence by a soft transition, we repair from earthly vehicles to these of air. Think not when woman's transient breath is fled that all her vanities at once are dead. Succeeding vanities she still regards and those she plays no more o' erlooks the cards her joy in gilded chariots when alive and love of Omra after death survive. For when the fair and all their pride expire to their first elements, their souls retire. The spirits of the sprites of fiery termagants in flame mount up and take a salamander's name. Soft, yielding minds to water glide away and sip with nymphs their elemental tea. The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome in search of mischief still on earth to roam the light coquettes and sylphs aloft, Repair and sport and flutter in the fields of air. So we learned that the. The elemental spirits are actually the distilled. The distilled souls of women's vanities, kind of. And the different types of vanities determines what kind of an elemental being it will be, whether a gnome or a sylph.
- [36:48]
Angelina Stanford
And that was our mock epic catalog. All right. Then we get to the. The very famous line about the moving toy shop of the heart. So he's just giving us the landscape here in this first canto, and I looked it up, and this is where Edmund Crispin's title, the Moving Toy Shop comes from. Comes from Rape of the Lock.
- [37:07]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. By the way, Pope is one of the most quoted of poets, even when we don't know we're quoting him. So if you've ever heard anyone say, to heir is human, to forgive divine. That's Alexander, my favorite. It's not the Bible.
- [37:19]
Angelina Stanford
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
- [37:20]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, that.
- [37:22]
Angelina Stanford
So she gets a warning here. The spirits are warning her that there's an event that we can see in the stars in the heavens.
- [37:31]
Thomas Banks
Yes, yes.
- [37:33]
Angelina Stanford
So beware of man.
- [37:34]
Thomas Banks
Right. But heaven reveals not what or how or where. Warned by the Silfo pious maid, beware this to disclose as all thy guardian can beware of all but most beware of man. And then notice he descends from the high to the low. A lot. In this poem, he likes to juxtapose the superficially sublime with the ridiculous. So this sylph is just given this very grave warning that, you know, some man might be making some attempt on your virtue. But then he said, when shock. And this is her spaniel or something, her lapdog when Schock, who thought she slept too long, leaped up and waked his mistress with his tongue. Twas then, Belinda, if reports say true, thy eyes first opened on a billet doux, which is French for love letter. Wounds, charms and ardors were no longer read, but all the vision vanished from thy head. So she's had this sort of visionary dream, but of course she dismisses it all because there's a love letter and there's young men to be met and, you know, society to go into and.
- [38:36]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, and then we have a long description of a woman at her 12 also.
- [38:39]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, and this is, this is an arming scene, isn't it? It's like, it's like. It's like Achilles putting on his armor. But it's her getting ready for her day.
- [38:45]
Angelina Stanford
So that's another epic convention is you always have an arming scene. And this is, this is her arming for battle.
- [38:51]
Thomas Banks
All right, so a brief passage describing her getting ready for her day. The various offerings of the world appear from each. She nicely culls with curious toil and decks the goddess with the glittering spoil. This casket India's glowing gems unlocks and all Arabia breathes from yonder box. The tortoise here and elephant unite transform to combs, the speckled and the white here files of pins extend their shining rose puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billets, doux. Now awful beauty puts on all its arms the fair each moment rises in her charms. I love that. Like how he insults bibles along with the rest of it. It's like all these trivial things. Yeah.
- [39:37]
Angelina Stanford
Now we mentioned last time that the, the meter of this time period is iambic pentameter and rhymed couplets. But we should just also point out that is the meter for this poem as well.
- [39:47]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [39:48]
Angelina Stanford
All right, so what's so. So now, Kanto 1, she's ready to go. I noticed that the five Kantos almost have the shape of like a five act play, the way it builds up. Act three is the climax. All right, so Canto 2, take us through it.
- [40:02]
Thomas Banks
All right, so in Canto 2, at the beginning, we have her. She's making her progress.
- [40:08]
Angelina Stanford
And isn't this a reference to Aeneas going up the Tiberium?
- [40:13]
Thomas Banks
Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So the way in book seven, Aeneas makes his triumphant arrival in Italy. Here she's going up the Thames and she's going to, you know, a meeting of society people like herself. It's. It's a very ordinary day, quite frankly, in the life of a well bred Woman who is going to court. There's an allusion to Queen Anne here as well. And the world that she moves in is. It's a very civilized world, but it also is one which attracts kind of frivolous people. Maybe forgivably frivolous, but there are really. The people we meet here are fops, wits, ladies who want to get a glance at the most, you know, the most fashionable type of dress or wig. And of this tribe, she is a. She is a, you know, eminent member. Did you have any further comments on
- [41:05]
Angelina Stanford
canto, too, to point out something really interesting here. So about line 30 in mind is when we meet the Baron, the adventurous baron, the bright locks admired, he saw, he wished into the prize, aspired, resolved to win. He meditates the way by force to ravish or by fraud betray. For when success a lover's toil attends, few ask if fraud or force attained his ends. Okay, so the reason this jumped out at me is that Northrop Fry has an entire chapter on this in the Secular Scripture about force and fraud.
- [41:36]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [41:37]
Angelina Stanford
And he uses the Greek words for them, which I will not do. But he points out that force and fraud is how the epics work, that the Iliad is a story of getting what you want by force, and the Odyssey is a story about getting what you want, want by fraud. That is deception. Because he's cunning, Odysseus. And so I just. Yeah, so there's more to it than that. But I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole except to say I was tickled to see that Alexander Pope keeps talking about force or fraud. Because Fry says that those are. Those are. That's that the heart of an epic. And so he's kind of bringing this question mark. What's going to happen? Is he going to. Is he going to deceive her and charm her and seduce her and get the law, or is he going to take it by force?
- [42:17]
Thomas Banks
Like Paris Dallin and another classical poet that I think Pope learned a lot from, actually. In fact, I know he did because Geoffrey Tillotson's book on the poetry of Pope talks about this. But Ovid, and one of one of Ovid's traits as a poet, you might admire this or not, he can turn pretty much anything into verse, including the Roman festal calendar. He built a long poem in six books called the Fasti out of the chief holidays of the Roman calendar and describing their origins. And that might sound incredibly tedious and boring. It's actually kind of clever how he does it. I think Pope also prides himself on the ability to turn this completely unimportant incident that nobody would ordinarily care about except the people involved into this little miniature, you know, epic.
- [43:12]
Angelina Stanford
It feels like he's having fun.
- [43:13]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
- [43:16]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah. Another interesting part, like line 100, Pope is juxtaposing important things with trivial things, right? So he puts a nymph breaking Diana's law with a china jar that has a flaw. Like, so all this is all the things that could go wrong. Big things, little things.
- [43:35]
Thomas Banks
And the next line. Or stain her honor or her new brocade.
- [43:39]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
- [43:40]
Thomas Banks
Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade or lose her heart or necklace at a ball. Yeah, yeah. He does that very, very well. It's almost like he's. It's almost like. It's almost like he has two Greek drama masks, one tragic and one comic in either hand. And he keeps putting one on his face and then the other.
- [43:58]
Angelina Stanford
Okay. And he references four circumstances. Fraud in the line right before that. So that's, again, the tr. Is the elite of the Odyssey. Is. Yeah, no, I. That's. And I was really impressed with that. No, no, it's so good. And then we get to Kanto 3, where she goes in for a card game, which is destroyed as a. I
- [44:16]
Thomas Banks
honestly think this was my favorite of the five.
- [44:19]
Angelina Stanford
That's fantastic. Okay. So before you jump into it, though, I want to say that this time period really enjoys doing that kind of thing, like anthropomorphizing objects into things. I was really reminded of Jonathan Swift's Battle of the Books here.
- [44:33]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yeah.
- [44:34]
Angelina Stanford
Because it's the same sort of thing. So what he does is he takes the idea that in this time period, they're having a huge intellectual debate about
- [44:43]
Thomas Banks
the ancients and modern.
- [44:44]
Angelina Stanford
Yes. What's better? The ancient book. Right. Okay. So. But he. In the Battle of the Books, he anthropomorphizes it by. You're in a library and there's an actual war happening, that the books are
- [44:55]
Thomas Banks
attacking each other and forming battalions. Okay, the Aesop part.
- [45:01]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah. Okay. So I'm. I'm gonna paraphrase this because I know we have little ears, so I'm going to paraphrase it. But at one point, an Aesop's Fable book realizes it has been Miss Shelved on the library, and it has been accidentally put on the shelf with the moderns. And he's like, I gotta get out of here. So the book is sneaking out of there, and what he does is. Is he takes. Takes the form of a donkey that is an ass. And Jonathan Swift points out that he's able to safely walk past all the modern books and they don't even notice that he doesn't belong here because all of those books are asses, too.
- [45:37]
Thomas Banks
It's brilliant.
- [45:40]
Angelina Stanford
But there's some similar stuff going on here with the card game. Take it away.
- [45:44]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. And the way he describes that is, obviously, this is Homeric, Virgilian combat on the field of battle. Except the field, the green field is the felt of the card table. Yes, I won't read the whole thing, but behold, four kings in majesty, revered, with hoary whiskers and a forky beard. And four fair queens whose hand sustained a flower, the expressive emblem of their softer power. Four knaves in garb succinct, a trusty band, caps on their heads and halberds in their hand, and party coloured troops, a shining train draw forth to combat all on the velvet plane. The skillful nymph reviews her force with care. Let spades be trumps, she said, and trumps they were. And yeah. Then for the rest of. For the rest of this. Of this stanza, he's describing the card game like it was the Trojan War, basically.
- [46:41]
Angelina Stanford
Exactly. And he's also doing it like it's a battle of the sexes because you have the male card and the male card.
- [46:48]
Thomas Banks
Some romantic tensions.
- [46:50]
Angelina Stanford
Yes. And again, I will. I will really tiptoe around this one because of little ears. Don't worry. But Mom's dads, you'll understand what I'm saying. The placement of the cards in relation to one another creates a certain amount of innuendo.
- [47:06]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yes. Yes, it does.
- [47:09]
Angelina Stanford
Okay.
- [47:09]
Thomas Banks
And you'll notice it when you read that part.
- [47:10]
Angelina Stanford
Yes.
- [47:11]
Thomas Banks
We won't say anymore.
- [47:11]
Angelina Stanford
All right, so the baron loses at cards and decides. I'm gonna get the lock now. New stratagems. The radiant lock to gain.
- [47:24]
Thomas Banks
Oh, and you notice that gnomes enter into this as well. The gnomes are kind of the. The malicious spirits. And they're kind of playing the part of the Furies in the Aeneid, because you remember in the seventh book of the Aeneid, Juno conspires with one of the Furies, Alecto, to drive the hero Turnus, or I guess the antagonist Turnus, mad and send him off to war against Aeneas. And there's something of that going on here as well, that, you know, all of these attendant spirits are trying to gently. Gently or not so gently influence character to do one thing or another which might be very destructive.
- [48:10]
Angelina Stanford
There's also a reference to the Furies after the lock is cut. And I thought that was interesting, because the Furies are what comes when there's some unnatural act, like a child strikes a father. The Furies are gonna show up. So this was a very unnatural.
- [48:24]
Thomas Banks
This was an unnatural act.
- [48:26]
Angelina Stanford
I know how death end up there was like patricide.
- [48:29]
Thomas Banks
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The rape of Helen. So swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome and in a vapor reached the dismal zone. No cheerful breeze, this sullen region knows the dreaded east is all the wind that blows. Here in a grotto sheltered close from air and screened in shades from day's detested glare, she sighs forever on her pensive bed, Pain at her side and Megrim at her head. And this, you know, this. This region of the bad vapors, if you've read the Odyssey, you remember that Odysseus is given a bag of winds by Aeolus, the guardian of the cave of the winds. So this is. This is Pope, you know, making reference to a work that his readers would. Would, you know, he's also got.
- [49:18]
Angelina Stanford
He's got some Paradise Lost references as well.
- [49:20]
Thomas Banks
I must have missed those.
- [49:22]
Angelina Stanford
So, like line 152, but Aries substances soon unites again. That's a line from Paradise Lost. Oh, it's when. When Satan is under by the. Oh, well, I didn't. It was a footnote.
- [49:36]
Thomas Banks
Okay.
- [49:36]
Angelina Stanford
Well, I could have faked it. I just know everything off the tips of my. I caught a lot of things, but I didn't catch that one. But Paradise Lost wouldn't be that. That old at that time. So. Yeah, so he wants. He wants the real victory. If I'm gonna lose the card game, I'm gonna take the hair. And of course, like, just like a. Just like a. A play, it. It builds up to the climax in Kanto 3. So at the end of Canto 3, he takes it, but he very much is described like Troy and Helen. Why don't you pick it up? Let wreaths of triumph. And then finish the Kanto.
- [50:10]
Thomas Banks
Yes. Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine the victor cried, the glorious prize is mine. While fish in streams or birds delight in air or in a coach and six the British fare. As long as Atalantis shall be red, or the small pillow grace a lady's bed, While visits shall be paid on solemn days when numerous wax lights in bright order blaze, While nymphs take treats or assignations give, so long my honour, name and praise shall live. What time would Spare from steel rest receives its date. And monuments like men, submit to fate. Steel could the labor of the gods destroy and strike to dust the imperial towers of Troy. Steel could the works of mortal pride confound. And how triumphal arches to the ground. Hew triumphal archers to the ground. What wonder then, fair nymph, thy hairs should feel the conquering force of unresisted steel.
- [51:09]
Angelina Stanford
Your hair should feel the conquering force of unresisted steel. That is fantastic. That's fantastic. All right. Canto 4. Yes, she realizes what's happened.
- [51:20]
Thomas Banks
She realizes what's happened. And, yes, this is.
- [51:23]
Angelina Stanford
She feels rage.
- [51:24]
Thomas Banks
Her wailing. Yes, her rage is. Is kind of almost on. Almost on a level with Juno's rage or. Or some. Some offended goddess in any number of epics.
- [51:35]
Angelina Stanford
What I wrote in the margins here, for this Kanto, is that she descends into madness.
- [51:41]
Thomas Banks
Yes.
- [51:42]
Angelina Stanford
Which is very much like Hera, but also, symbolically is a descent into Hades. Right. So that always happens in an epic as well. All right, but I. But I love. I love how at the beginning of Canto 4, she's raging. She's so upset. You've destroyed my life. You've given me a headache.
- [52:01]
Thomas Banks
Yep. Forever curse. Forever curse be this detested day which snatched my best, my favorite curl away. Happy. Ah, ten times happy had I been if Hampton Court these eyes had never seen. And Helen in Helen of Troy, by the way, doesn't appear very much in either of the two epics. But in book three of the Iliad, we meet her after the Ten Years War, which, you know, her love with Paris has caused. And she. She expresses the wish that she would have been 10 times happier if she had died before she had been ravished off to Troy by Paris. So that's. These lines are a sort of tip of the hat to that. Yet am I not. Am not I the first mistaken made by love of courts to numerous ills betrayed? Oh, had I, rather unadmired remained in some lone isle or distant northern land where the gilt chariot never marks the way, where none learns omber nor e' er taste. Bohe.
- [53:01]
Angelina Stanford
Omber is the card game.
- [53:02]
Thomas Banks
And omber is the card game. Yes.
- [53:06]
Angelina Stanford
And then the Furies come Love out. Line 92. The Furies come because this unnatural act has happened. And so she cries to her maid and says, you're not gonna believe what happened. All the constant care and watch. You combed it. You used to wrap paper curlers around it. You even used to use a curling iron. This is so crazy to me.
- [53:29]
Thomas Banks
When do Curling irons enter into history.
- [53:33]
Angelina Stanford
Original ones were just like. Like metal tubes and they would stick it in a fire and heat it up. So it was not uncommon that you would burn off the hair that was actually very like.
- [53:41]
Thomas Banks
That could be kind of dangerous.
- [53:43]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, well, women suffer for beauty.
- [53:44]
Thomas Banks
Women suffer for beauty. It's true. Yeah.
- [53:47]
Angelina Stanford
But I don't know how long that goes. But. But definitely in the 18th century. They're curling.
- [53:51]
Thomas Banks
They have curling papers and things like that.
- [53:53]
Angelina Stanford
She's referencing a torturing iron wreathed around the head. I think that's a curling eye. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that's how they got those ringlets around their face. Yeah, but of course, I mean, they had wigs at this time. But anyhow, continue. I like how her fear here is that he is going to parade her lock around in a triumph.
- [54:13]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yes.
- [54:13]
Angelina Stanford
And it was like a triumph is.
- [54:15]
Thomas Banks
A triumph is a honorary procession given to a victorious Roman general or consul who has just conquered some barbarian army. And he would have, you know, the spoils of war, you know, the spolia brought with him. And that can include captives. And, you know, actually the Arch of Titus, if you ever go to Rome, The Arch of Titus, which still survives today, it shows the Roman legionaries of Titus returning from the sack of Jerusalem, carrying the menorah and the vessels of the temple of Herod with them. So that would be a triumph. But here we're talking about. Yeah, this little, you know, cut of hair. I took this girl I like, mark
- [54:55]
Angelina Stanford
of honor for the victor. And it's a deep mark of shame designed to. For example, the reason that Cleopatra committed suicide was not because she was so in love with.
- [55:07]
Thomas Banks
As a captive in Augustus triumph.
- [55:09]
Angelina Stanford
So that would have been too shameful. So Belinda is. She's concerned that her hair is going to be paraded around now in this triumph as a trophy.
- [55:17]
Thomas Banks
And too late she learns the wisdom that the sylph tried to whisper to her. So, oh, had I, rather unadmired remained in some lone isle or distant northern land, etc, etc. There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye like roses that in deserts bloom and die. What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam. Oh, had I stayed and said my prayers at home. Twas this the morning omens seemed to tell. And omens, of course, will often figure in epics as plot devices, like when the suitors see, you know, the eagle tearing apart the snake in the Odyssey. But here that the bad omen was thrice from my trembling hand the patch box fell so, like, her little makeup kit fell from her hand. The tottering china shook without a wind. Nay pole sat mute, and shock was most unkind.
- [56:13]
Angelina Stanford
So the patches were a really.
- [56:16]
Thomas Banks
I'm gonna show them, like, fake moles. Right.
- [56:18]
Angelina Stanford
I'm gonna nerd out on my. On my fashion history here. So smallpox and things like that were very common, and so most people had some kind of scarring on their faces. There's been a criticism of almost all historical dramas and that everybody's skin.
- [56:33]
Thomas Banks
Everyone's skin is good skin and teeth
- [56:34]
Angelina Stanford
is too good because they would have been marred by scars from various diseases. So what they did is they had these little black patches essentially, like, adhesive moles. And I actually don't know how they stuck them on. But anyway, that. That's neither here nor there.
- [56:48]
Thomas Banks
We don't even need to know.
- [56:49]
Angelina Stanford
And they could be in different shapes, and you put them in different places. I actually read that where you placed. It was a secret code. Oh, okay. So, like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna really age myself. In the 80s, people used to say that what earring you wore your earring in was a code. Let's just say it was that kind of code. Yeah, that kind of code. So, like, I'm available. I'm married, but I'm available. Okay. I remember I read a diary entry thing, and it was a woman who had a natural mole on the side of her cheek that signaled, I'm available,
- [57:23]
Thomas Banks
and it was not a virtuous woman.
- [57:24]
Angelina Stanford
Yes. And so that was, like, a major stressful thing. How do I go to this? And so, yeah, the patches are a big thing. So, yeah, so she dropped them. That was. That was her omen. And then this other guy shows up and, like, wants to, what, defend her honor? And so he does. He does. He blows up.
- [57:42]
Thomas Banks
There's blowing snuff in the baron's face. Yeah, yeah.
- [57:46]
Angelina Stanford
And cursing him out.
- [57:48]
Thomas Banks
Yes. And this. This all erupts into, you know, shouting and afraid. And it's. It's another battle, but it's a battle in which, you know, one fop is insulting another. And. And, you know, the. The local witch is trying to make, you know, trying to make pequent observations on the whole thing. And what is. What does Pope say? One died in metaphor and one in song.
- [58:09]
Angelina Stanford
And at the end, well, there's another innuendo where she says, he could have plucked any hairs but these.
- [58:20]
Thomas Banks
Right, right.
- [58:23]
Angelina Stanford
So, yes, Pope's having a grand old time. Time. All right, so Canto 5, again, going back to the. Is this a Comedy? Or is this a tragedy? The audience is melting in tears, but tears of laughter, because it's also ridiculous. And then now we're getting to sort of a didactic point of the poem.
- [58:42]
Thomas Banks
Right.
- [58:42]
Angelina Stanford
He's going to tell us what all this means.
- [58:45]
Thomas Banks
And his moral is not one, which I suspect he really wants us to take that seriously. I don't think you could take a serious moral away from this, really, that. That.
- [58:54]
Angelina Stanford
That beauty is fleeting.
- [58:57]
Thomas Banks
Right? Yeah, but. Yeah. So this. This speech. Or without the need to read the whole thing at the beginning of Canto 5, or. Who would learn one who would not scorn what housewives cares, produce, or who would learn one earthly thing of use to patch na ogle might become a saint Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint. But since alas, frail beauty must decay, curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray, since painted or not painted, all shall fade and she who scorns a man must die a maid, what then remains but, well, our power to use and keep good humour still whate' er we lose? And trust me, dear, good humour can prevail when airs and flights and screams and scolding Fail beauties in vain Their pretty eyes may roll Charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul. And that's something. That's a convention that you find in a lot of 18th and maybe other periods, too. But talking about women rolling their charming eyes, was. Was that like fluttering your eyelashes or something? Rolling your eyes in some kind of suggestive fashion?
- [60:06]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah. I don't.
- [60:07]
Thomas Banks
I don't know how you make eye rolling look sexy, but maybe. Maybe that was an art that women. Maybe you learned that in finishing school as well.
- [60:13]
Angelina Stanford
Sexy moves in the past that leave me scratching my head.
- [60:16]
Thomas Banks
You notice how he describes fans, kind of like they were weapons.
- [60:19]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, yes.
- [60:20]
Thomas Banks
Joseph Addison did that too. I don't know who wrote first. Joseph Addison in an essay, but Addison has an essay on fans and he talks about. Wouldn't it be. Wouldn't it be both frightening and rather attractive if women learned the drill of arms with their fans and, like, had, you know, shoulder arms and, you know, at ease and all that at rest. Yeah.
- [60:43]
Angelina Stanford
And then, of course, the gods have to get involved now because it wouldn't be an epic without that. Right. Jove suspends his golden scales in the air, so is that the wits of
- [60:52]
Thomas Banks
men against the lock of hair? So, yeah, that's when he's weighing the fates of Achilles and Hector, and Hector's is heavier, so Hector will die. But we discovered that the lock of her hair, which weighs probably a millionth of an ounce's weightier than the widths of. Of the men around her. I love that fair Pope.
- [61:10]
Angelina Stanford
That's fair. That's fair.
- [61:13]
Thomas Banks
Yes.
- [61:15]
Angelina Stanford
So then she attacks him.
- [61:17]
Thomas Banks
Yes. Right. She does. And so when bold Homer makes the gods engage and heavenly breasts with human passions rage against Pallas, Mars, Latona, Hermes arms and all Olympus rings with loud alarms Joe Jove's thunder roars Heaven trembles all around blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound Earth shakes her nodding towers the ground gives way and the pale ghosts start at the flash of day. And again, all of this is. It's almost like Pope had written in. You know, his margin notes, make a storm in a teacup. Because that's what he's doing in scene.
- [61:57]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- [61:57]
Thomas Banks
Is raising a storm in a teacup up.
- [62:00]
Angelina Stanford
I'm having a lot of fun at it, too.
- [62:02]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. And even, I guess there's a minor poet here whom nobody really cares about. But he compares him to the dying swan on the meander river, which sings only as it dies, his swan song.
- [62:17]
Angelina Stanford
And I thought this was pretty funny. Line about 103. So she flies at the guy, right? She's really mad. She says, restore the lock. She cries. And all around Restore the lock. The vaulted roofs rebound, not fear so fellow strain roared for the handkerchief that cost its prey.
- [62:36]
Thomas Banks
But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed. The chiefs contend till all the prize is lost. And the chiefs contending there, I assume, are Agamemnon and Achilles fighting over the. Yeah, the girl.
- [62:50]
Angelina Stanford
The lock, obtained with guilt and kept with pain in every place is sought, but sought in vain. So she can't find it.
- [62:57]
Thomas Banks
I think maybe it's mounted to the lunar sphere, which would be the realm of the moon, which is where, for instance, people lose their wits, people lose their minds and mortal things place where
- [63:09]
Angelina Stanford
snuff boxes and tweezer cases are.
- [63:12]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. And bows and snuffbox and tweezer cases. Their broken vows and deathbed alms are found and lovers harps with ends of ribbon bound.
- [63:21]
Angelina Stanford
Okay, anybody who's read the Christmas by J.K. rowling. Like the place where lost toys go. Like, this is basically it, by the
- [63:28]
Thomas Banks
way, another epic not as well known. But he might have this in mind. Here is Orlando Furioso.
- [63:36]
Angelina Stanford
I got a note for it. Oh, yeah.
- [63:38]
Thomas Banks
Orlando, which is the Italian for Roland, you know, the paladin of Charlemagne. He loses his wits for love, and his wits are on the moon. And the fact that you Knew that
- [63:48]
Angelina Stanford
without a footnote, isn't it?
- [63:49]
Thomas Banks
Oh, yeah, yeah. And who's. No, it's one of the famous, famous episodes in Italian literature, and one of. One of his fellow knights has to travel on a hippogriff to the moon to retrieve his. To retrieve his sanity, basically.
- [64:00]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah.
- [64:00]
Thomas Banks
This is. I think this is something that. That Pope probably is making another homage to in his playful way.
- [64:07]
Angelina Stanford
And my note also says that Romulus disappeared mysteriously, was caught up in heaven. There's a reference to that here as well.
- [64:13]
Thomas Banks
Oh, right, yeah. No, that's good. That's good. I didn't catch that one.
- [64:17]
Angelina Stanford
Rome's great founder to the heavens withdrew.
- [64:21]
Thomas Banks
I completely overlooked that couplet. Yes. But, yeah, the story, it's recorded in Livy, book one or two of his History of Rome, where Romulus dies. I mean, his body just disappears. There's an assembly of the Senate, and some kind of mist or vapor overspreads it, and Romulus is taken up, and some think he might have been murdered, but it's decided by an official decree of the Senate that he was simply translated to heaven. Heaven. And would now be honored as a God. So that's his name, as a God is Quirinus. Anyway, so there you go.
- [64:55]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, so there I go. So it ends with this sort of, you know, ascent to heaven.
- [65:00]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. And. And the. The lock of hair becomes a comet, which actually is appropriate because comet comes from the Latin word for hair, because of the tail of a comet is. Is the hair of the comet. Yeah. No, it is. Very clever. It is. And he compares it to the lock of Berenice. And Berenice was a Ptolemaic queen of the third century bc, and there was a story told of her that when her husband, King Ptolemy, went off to war, she vowed to the gods to make an offering of her hair if his life would be spared. And he come safe home in triumph. And when she made this offering, the lock of hair was taken up and turned into a constellation by the gods. Catullus has a poem about this, the lock. Lock of Berenice. And. Yeah, anyway, so. So she has this consolation that her. Her lock of hair is up there in the heavens.
- [65:52]
Angelina Stanford
Now, that sounds so much like the Cimmerillion. That makes me think that Catullus was an influence on that.
- [65:57]
Thomas Banks
Oh, can I admit I've never read the similarly all the way through. I've read gifs of it that are
- [66:02]
Angelina Stanford
stolen and then they end up being put in the stars.
- [66:05]
Thomas Banks
So he ends with. He ends with this, this, this. What would you call it apostrophe. To Belinda herself. Then cease, bright nymph, to mourn thy ravish'd hair which adds new glory to the shining sphere. Not all the tresses that fair head can boast shall draw such envy as the lock you lost. For after all the murders of your eye, when after millions slain, yourself shall die, when those fair suns shall set as set they must, and all those tresses shall be laid in dust, this lock the muse shall consecrate to fame, and midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name. She gets immortality, Literary immortality. And I guess, you know, the proof is in the pudding. Here we are reading this poem today.
- [66:52]
Angelina Stanford
This was so fun.
- [66:52]
Thomas Banks
It's a delightful poem. It's. It's. Yeah, it's. You could say it's cotton candy, but it's a perfectly sweet bit of cotton candy.
- [66:58]
Angelina Stanford
It is. And again, you know, this isn't heavy satire, this. It would be absurd to say, oh, Pope trivializes the concerns of women and blah, blah, blah. That's not what this is. This is light, laughing, making fun of ourselves.
- [67:13]
Thomas Banks
It's almost like a perfectly carved. Well, perfectly carved snuffbox, if you will. It's something that's completely artificial and, like, not entirely necessary, I guess you would say, and unimportant. But it's. It's a perfect piece of craftsmanship in a small way. Yeah.
- [67:28]
Angelina Stanford
Which is what? That's pretty much what cs.
- [67:30]
Thomas Banks
And that's what he wanted to make, and he succeeded, completely.
- [67:32]
Angelina Stanford
That's right. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong.
- [67:34]
Thomas Banks
Nothing wrong at all.
- [67:35]
Angelina Stanford
Playing with language, playing with the forms, seeing what you can do, delighting in all of it, and also kind of just laughing at that. Human beings, we can take things very seriously.
- [67:47]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [67:47]
Angelina Stanford
I mean, I. If some stranger came up to me and cut off my ponytail, I would take that.
- [67:51]
Thomas Banks
Then you would be calling the gods to rain thunder and lightning hath no
- [67:55]
Angelina Stanford
fury like a woman whose hair has been messed with. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Any woman who's had a bad haircut and walked out of a salon in a murderous rage knows that this is destroyed.
- [68:04]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [68:05]
Angelina Stanford
Actually, a high topic treated in a high style. Now, this was so much fun. I'm glad you suggested it.
- [68:10]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. Yeah. And we just haven't done very much poetry, I guess, or aside from dramatic poetry.
- [68:15]
Angelina Stanford
All right, so if somebody is like, oh, I got a little taste of Pope. I enjoy him. Where should they go next?
- [68:20]
Thomas Banks
I think his essay on criticism, which also. It doesn't sound like the name of a poem, but it is a little
- [68:26]
Angelina Stanford
learning is a dangerous thing. Yeah, I get that one in essay and man confused.
- [68:30]
Thomas Banks
I think it's. I can't remember. I think it is essay on Criticism is and if you want to know how Augustan writers thought about. Yeah. You know, what is what is literary taste? How does how is poetic composition best approach. Read the essay on Criticism. It's not really that long. He also wrote in imitation of Ovid, a poetic epistle, sort of like Ovid's Heroides Eloisa to Abelard, which is a imaginary love letter written in verse from Eloise the nun to her lost lover Abelard. I think those are both great poems and parts of the Duncea, though maybe not the whole. The Dunciad is a mock epic dedicated to the hack writers of Pope's day whom he despised. Yeah.
- [69:19]
Angelina Stanford
And I think everyone I said this last week, but I think everybody should read Jonathan Swift.
- [69:24]
Thomas Banks
He's and if you enjoy one, you will almost certainly enjoy the other were they were friends for a reason.
- [69:30]
Angelina Stanford
I do have a webinar on Jonathan Swift on our website and I I set the framework there for what he's about and walk you through Gulliver's Travels. But I also mentioned a good bit about the battle of the books. Yeah, I'm a huge I'm a huge fan of Swift. I I like both Swift and Pope so much. So thanks for joining us today, guys, and thanks for reading some neoclassical poetry with us. Hopefully we open opened your eyes to the possibilities of another time period. But next week we're gonna go back way further back to the Middle Ages, to the days of King Arthur and the search for the Holy Grail. Because none other than Malcolm Guy is going to be on the episode next week to talk about his new book on Galahad and the search for the Holy Grail. And Cindy Rollins is going to be back for that interview too. So we ought to have a really interesting conversation about the imagination and legends and King Arthur and the Grail and obviously didacticism. Oh, I kid. I'm really looking forward to that. So tune in next week and make sure you get on the House of Humane Letters mailing list so you can find out what webinars are going out. We've got our summer schedule is going to be coming out really soon, so be on the lookout for that and sign up for Heather's Mary Poppins webinar here, here. All right, stick around to the end of this podcast. Mr. Banks will have a special poem picked out for us and again. We are 100 member sponsored sponsor. So shout out to our Patreon and you can join that vibrant community supporting this podcast and reading loads of books together and talking about everything under the sun@patreon.com backslash the literary life. Well, thanks so much and until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy@morningtimeformoms.com Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks,
- [72:09]
Thomas Banks
Chorus from a song for St. Cecilia's Day by John Dryden. As from the power of sacred lays the spheres began to move, and sung the great Creator's praise to all the blest above. So when the last and dreadful hour this crumbling pageant shall devour, the trumpet shall be heard on high the dead shall live, the living die, and music shall untune the sky.