How The Rape of the Lock drew on Selected Poems
A documented line of influence: Alexander Pope demonstrably engaged John Dryden’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Selected Poems
John Dryden · 1697
PoetsThe influenced
The Rape of the Lock
Alexander Pope · 1714
PoetsRelevance
9/10
On The Rape of the Lock’s page
- Pope didn't invent the mock-heroic — he inherited it from Dryden, whom he venerated as his master
- Dryden's Mac Flecknoe set the template: epic grandeur turned on a subject that can't bear the weight, played for satire
- Read it first and you see exactly the line Pope is standing on — the heroic couplet honed into a comic scalpel
On Selected Poems’s page
- Dryden's Mac Flecknoe is the first great mock-heroic poem in English — the form Pope would perfect
- It taught the whole trick: deploy the full machinery of epic on something gloriously trivial, and let the gap do the comedy
- Pope called Dryden his master — and The Rape of the Lock is what a master's pupil builds next