Question

Which of these excerpts from Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" most explicitly suggests that it is a parody of epic poetry?
A. "Coffee makes the politician wise."
B. "He took the gift respectfully, and spread/the scissors open..."
C. "Restore the lock! ' she cries; and all around..."
D. "Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!"

Answer 1

The correct answer here would be D. The epics are long narrative poems which tell grand tales of the legendary heroes and their lives.  Pope’s R.ape of the Lock is a mock-epic. This is a type of a poem which represents a minor, maybe even a banal event as something from an epic or a legend. The line “Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla’s fate!” is really out of place in a poem about the theft of a lock of hair. The man infatuated by a woman without her permission cuts of a lock of her hair which leads to the animosity between two families.