{"product_id":"2940150914476","title":"The Rape of the Lock","description":"For lo! the Board with Cups and \u003cbr\u003eSpoons is crown'd,\u003cbr\u003eThe Berries crackle, and the \u003cbr\u003eMill turns round.\u003cbr\u003eOn shining Altars of Japan \u003cbr\u003eThey raise\u003cbr\u003eThe silver Lamp; the fiery \u003cbr\u003eSpirits blaze.\u003cbr\u003eFrom silver \u003cbr\u003eSpouts the grateful\u003cbr\u003eLiquors glide,\u003cbr\u003eAnd China's Earth receives the smoaking Tyde.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePope's masterly mock epic 'The Rape of the Lock', satirizes a notorious society scandal in which a lock of a woman's hair is stolen. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tale was based upon a real incident in what we might now describe as \"a war of the sexes\". A certain Lord Petre had the courage - or folly - to surreptitiously cut off a lock of hair from the pretty head of a young lady named Arabella Fermor. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs his introductory letter makes clear, women in that period were supposed to be decorative rather than rational, and the perceived loss of beauty was a serious matter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJust as the ravishment of Helen led to a long and bloody war, so the theft of the lock led to a feud between the two families involved. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePope was commissioned, by a friend of both sides to compose a poem that might mollify all parties. \"It was in this view,\" Pope wrote later, \"that I wrote Rape of the Lock.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNever has so great a poem emerged from so trivial a cause: the stolen hair has by now achieved immortality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744) was the greatest English poet of his age, whose acerbic insights into human nature have entered the language, and whose verse still astonishes with its energy and inventiveness centuries after his death. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as his translations of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare.","brand":"Kizra Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47109675679984,"sku":"2940150914476","price":3.65,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940150914476_p0.jpg?v=1763756068","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940150914476","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}