This handout focuses on what your students, especially those college-bound or in college, need to know about Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock.”
Its fill-in-the-blanks format, largely text-based, has your students analyze the historical background of the poem, its themes, structure, mock-epic genre, and stylistic features.
The handout begins by stressing that “rape” in the title meant “theft” in Pope’s time, not that horrible crime in its modern sense, which does not occur in the poem.
However,