"The New Star", Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for The Rape of the Lock

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic poem written by Alexander Pope, first published in 1712 in two cantos, and then reissued in 1714 in a much-expanded 5-canto version. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Aubrey Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was an influential English illustrator, and author. ... Generally, mock-heroic is a satirical piece or parody that mocks common Romantic or modern stereotypes of heroes. ... Alexander Pope, an English poet best known for his Essay on Criticism and Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) is generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the early eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. ... // Events Treaty of Aargau signed between Catholic and Protestants. ... A canto is a significant section of a long poem or the highest part in a piece of choral music. ... Battle of Gangut, by Maurice Baquoi, 1724-27. ...

The poem satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It was based on an incident recounted by Pope's friend, John Caryll. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, were both from aristocratic Catholic families at a period in England when Catholicism was legally proscribed. Petre, lusting after Arabella, had cut off a lock of her hair without permission, and the consequent argument had created a breach between the two families. Pope wrote the poem at the request of friends in an attempt to "comically merge the two." He utilised the character Belinda to represent Arabella and introduced an entire system of "sylphs," or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodic version of the gods and goddesses of conventional epic. 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ... The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, and one of the major forms of narrative literature. ... As a Christian ecclesiastical term, Catholic - from the Greek adjective , meaning general or universal[1] - is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as follows: ~Church, (originally) whole body of Christians; ~, belonging to or in accord with (a) this, (b) the church before separation into Greek or Eastern and Latin or... Sylph is a faux-mythological creature in the Western tradition. ...

The humour of the poem comes from the tempest in a teapot of vanity being couched within the elaborate, formal verbal structure of an epic poem. When the Baron, for example, goes to snip the lock of hair, Pope says,

The Peer now spreads the glittering Forfex wide,

T' inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.

Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd,

A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;

Fate urged the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,

(But Airy Substance soon unites again)

The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever

From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!

— Canto III

Using epic battle imagery to describe a small pair of ladies' scissors satirizes the ridiculous nature of the whole situation.

Three of Uranus's moons are named after characters from "The Rape of the Lock": Belinda, Umbriel, and Ariel, the latter name shared with Shakespeare's The Tempest. Uranus has 27 known moons. ... Atmospheric pressure 0 kPa Belinda (be-lin-da) is a moon of Uranus. ... Atmospheric pressure 0 kPa Umbriel (um-bree-əl, IPA ) is a moon of Uranus discovered on 1851-10-24 by William Lassell. ... Atmospheric pressure 0 kPa Ariel (air-ee-əl, IPA ) is a moon of Uranus discovered on 24 October 1851 by William Lassell. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

<img src="http://www.fortmcmurrayspca.com/user_images/86Elmo.jpg">