English 102: British and American Literature, 1650-1780
Professor Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook

MWF 11:00-11:50 l Girvetz 1004 l office hours: M 2-3, Th 10-11 l office: South Hall 2503 l 893-3349 l ecook@english.ucsb.edu l
TAs: Gordon Batchelor l Rachel Mann l Lara Rutherford l Summer Star

The “deep structure” of Rape of the Lock:

From (amoral) disorder to FORMAL ORDER 
 

Rhetorical figures that make kinds of order 

1. Synecdoche (part for whole or vice versa):

      Men = wigs 

Where wigs with wigs, sword-knots sword-knots strive,

Beaus banish beaus, coaches coaches drive.  (1.101-02) 

(also an example of personification – making things into people – and reification – making people into things.) 
 

2. Alliteration (series of words beginning w same sound) 

Puffs, powder, patches, Bibles, billet-doux … (1.138) 
 
 

3. Zeugma (verb controlling two unlike nouns) 

“Or stain her honor, or her new brocade,

………………………………………….

Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball …”  (2.107, 109) 

 

Finally, the COUPLET itself -  

the formal exemplification of the sexual thematics of coupling, of moving from one to two (heterosexual complementarity?):  

The couplet can contain outrageous matter in perfect form: 

“Oh hadst thou, cruel! Been content to seize 

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!”  (IV.175-76) 
 
 
 

The machine embodiment of the couplet:  

      the scissors (a “two-edged weapon”)  
 
 

The “rape” scene’s  play with 1s and 2s : 
 

The peer now spreads the glitt’ring forfex wide 

T’enclose the lock; now joins it to divide.    (3.147-48)