Literature of neo classics
The work continued to be regarded as an attack on religion well into the nineteenth century.One commentator complained that Swift must be "a compulsive cruiser of Dunghils ... Ditches, and Common-Shores with a great Affectation [sic] for every thing that is nasty. When he spies any Objects that another Person would avoid looking on, that he Embraces".
A Tale of a Tub was enormously popular, presenting both a satire of religious excess and a parody of contemporary writing in literature, politics, theology, Bipical exegesis and medicine through its comically excessive front matter and series of digressions throughout. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity. At the time it was written, politics and religion were still closely linked in England, and the religious and political aspects of the satire can often hardly be separated. "The work made Swift notorious, and was widely misunderstood, especially by oueen Anne herself who mistook its purpose for profanity.It "effectively disbarred its author from proper preferment" in the churchofEngland
The work holds significant importance in both English literature and intellectual history because of its various satirical and radical literary techniques. The work primarily exposes religious hypocrisy and the intellectual trends of Swift's period, including the differences between past and modern thoughts.
The rape of the lock :
Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock is a mock-epic poem. It satirizes a real quarrel among aristocrats. It does this by treating a minor incident, the cutting of a lock of hair, with the grandiose tone of a classical epic. The poem, written in five cantos, critiques the vanity and frivolity of 18th-century English high society.
Summary:
At the opening of the poem, Belinda, a beautiful and wealthy young woman is asleep. Ariel, her guardian sylph , watches over her and sends her a dream which highlights what the role of the sylph is—namely to protect virtuous young women, though at times he makes the whole thing sound a tad sinister by suggesting that sylphs might control the action of mortals or get them into trouble. He is worried that some disaster is close at hand, though he is not sure what form it will take. He instead warns her through the dream to “beware of man.” Belinda then awakes and begins dressing herself for a day of social engagements. With the help of her maid Betty.and that of her attendant sylphs, Belinda then completes the elaborate process of beautifying herself.
Looking exceptionally beautiful, Belinda then sails from London to Hampton court, and dazzles the crowd as she sails along. The two lock in which she has styled her hair look especially attractive, and the Baron eyes them in admiration—he has resolved to take one for himself, either by force or by theft. Before sunrise that morning, he had prayed for success to the God of love. As a kind of sacrifice burned a pyre made up of “French romances” (i.e., love stories), garters, gloves, and all the tokens of his romantic past, including love letters. Meanwhile, back in the present Belinda’s boat is still gliding along and Ariel is still troubled by the feeling that something horrible is going to happen. He summons a huge army of sylphs out of the air, and explains that he feels disaster is going to strike at any moment, though his idea of disaster is actually quite silly—that at worst Belinda might lose her virginity, but that it might also be something as trivial as a new dress getting stained, losing a piece of jewelry, or her lapdog dying. He instructs a number of sylphs to man different stations, including her fan, her lock, her watch, and her dog.
