'From Pope's perspective as a satirist,' writes Michael Seidel, 'London is full of bodies of dunces and is awash in printer's ink", hitting on the proliferation of print culture in the early 18th century and its wider implications that Pope was so interested in. This proliferation manifests itself in multiple ways in his satires The Rape of the Lock [1712] and The Dunciad [published and revised in 1728, 1729, 1742 and 1743] in which material culture saturates and overwhelms both poems. Both texts also share their roots in Homer's Iliad, a choice that in a sense it elides with the saturation of material culture, since the epic, by its very nature, is concerned with greatness, prizes and trophies. Although some critics have perceived Pope's satires as mocking works, outrageous parodies of sincere subjects. , in this essay I will discuss his use of Homer's work as a comparative and framing tool to ridicule his contemporary material culture as narrow-minded and illusory, in an age that was just beginning to develop a self-awareness about his legacy and the its place in history and the world, in literary debates on novelty versus the return to classical antiquity and on the emerging perception of England as the mercantile capital of the world. Tensions between the illusory and the tangible, and the mundane and the domestic are intertwined throughout Pope's satires, which focus on the chaos of the material world, which forms a central target for Pope's attacks on the contemporary world, in turn mocking those who [sometimes literally] overbuy. in his false sincerity or his promises. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Pope's Rape of the Lock is often called a "mock epic" or "satirical burlesque" by Seidel, for example, who describes the mode as "a surrogate literary program, a way of rearticulating an important part of the reevaluation of one's literary inheritance from any culture". For writers of Pope's time, this notion of "legacy" was largely centered on the classical writers of the Augustan period, it being Homer upon whom Pope drew inspiration for his satire. However, to say this, or to label Pope's work as "mock" epic or "burlesque", implies that the epic itself is the site of his satire, when in fact the opposite is true. Despite claims that his works "do violence to Homer's passages, adulterate them", it seems clear that Pope's body of work, including a translation of Homer's Iliad, strongly implies his reverence for the ancient poet: "He was a father of learning", a Soul capable of ranging over all Creation with an intellectual Vision, shining alone [...] leaving behind a Work adorned with the Knowledge of its Time [...] A Work that will always stand at the summit of sublime Character'[.]Pope's admiration for the poet's work is clear in his description of it as 'at the summit of sublime Character', and far from mockery, this passage illuminates the desire of Pope to emulate the role of Homer. He perceives it as "capable of ranging over the entire creation", producing "a work adorned with the knowledge of its time", a position which Pope attempts to achieve, as Seidel describes the Dunciad as "a monumental example of how the scope of satire expands in the early eighteenth century to absorb virtually everything that modern society can display and produce.” By taking on this same role and absorbing the epic conventions that he so admires, the satirical nature of Pope's works arises fromchanged scope of what "society can display and produce", making his world disappointing compared to that of the epic. The notion of "prizes" or "trophies" is a motivator in both the Dunciad and the Rape of the Lock, for example, but while the Trojan War is fought for Helen, the woman valued enough to "launch a thousand ships", the "prize" ' of concern in TheThe rape of the lock seems barely a quarter of the value, like a mere lock of hair: 'This Nymph, to the destruction of mankind, / Nourished two locks, which gracefully hung behind'[.][ Canto II, 19-20] 'These two lines work in a very similar way to the chronology of Pope's work which follows that of Homer; the "destruction of humanity" in line 19 sets up the anticipation of something terrible or disastrous, but in the next line we encounter the image of two locks of hair, hanging benignly and "gracefully" from the Lady's head. This is exemplary of the classical hyperbole and sense of inflation that the Pope proliferates throughout the poem as he exposes the concerns of those in the poem as hysterical and excessive. Through this same method, Pope plays on the anxieties of his time and his legacy in history, replacing a mighty warrior and his weapon with Belinda and his truncheon: "Now meet thy destiny, cried Belinda incensed, / And drew a from his side./(The same, his ancient character on the bridge,/His great-great-grandfather wore it around his neck,/[…]He formed a huge buckle for his widow's dress […] Then in a bodkin grac 'of his mother's hair/Which long wore, and now bears Belinda'.[Canto V, 88-90,92,95-6]The Pope fashions a story for the bodkin similar to that of those included in the classical epics in reference to Once again, Pope employs hyperbole here, reducing a powerful weapon to a "bodkin", a kind of needle that is incapable of inflicting "deadly" blows. Just like Helen reduced to a lock of hair, the Bodkin provokes a feeling of loss in reflection on classical epics and, more importantly, an exaggerated perception of petty material possessions as important or powerful. While the armed objects attributed to Homer's warriors leave them with a legacy of heroism, Pope expresses ridicule for frivolous objects. ] Belinda and her recent ancestors are remembered, at any rate here as mere decoration, worn 'around the neck' or embellished with 'her mother's hair'. By satirizing a real episode, Pope shapes a perspective around the closed, civilized world in which his characters live, and his Homeric framework expresses the pettiness of their arguments, but he also mocks the habit of sensationalizing and placing a excessive trust in objects of little real importance. I have analyzed specific objects of ridicule in Pope's satire, what has not yet been addressed is the mass proliferation of material things in his work. The Rape of the Lock is ornate, decorated with objects, exemplified by Belinda's toilet which finds parallels with a virtuoso's collection of curiosities: "Here rows of pins extend their shining rows,/Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bible, Billet -doux./Now. the horrible Beauty lays down all her weapons'[Canto I ,137-142]Almost sacrilegiously, the 'bible' is casually confused among the 'puffs' and 'powders' of Belinda as if they had equal value.It is here then that an opposition arises, where we see that not only are petty objects inflated to false values, but that important things are neglected, this complaint is at the heart of Pope's attack on the proliferation of print culture, which he said brought a “new wind of commercial and material order to England” as writing became heavily implicated in economic capital, he again appropriates partof Homer's work in its heroic couplet form, but also structurally, as we see the goddess of dullness at "war" with reason and darkness at war with light. Just as in the case of Rape of The Lock, the framing device positions The Dunciad's "war" as being fought for ignoble ends. Pope mourns the loss of purity of writing as the figures and clichés of Homer's epic multiply and become distorted or excessive. Homer's Hera, for example, who is described as cow-eyed, becomes an ugly "Juno of stately size, / With cow's udders and with ox's eyes" [Book II, 155-6] in the work of Pope. We see two different types of "excess" arise between The Kidnapping of the Keyhole and The Dunciad, where in the former Homer's heroic style was applied to the subject making it appear excessive and exaggerated, using it to mock the treatment of small commodities as precious and worldly possessions , and in the latter, elements of Homer's work are directly amplified and multiplied to horrific proportions in order to condemn those writers he deems muddying the waters of the literary sphere. With the rise of print culture and the expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695, Pope sees the literary sphere overwhelmed by bad writers and bad work, seeking only money, rather than the purity he finds in Homer's work: " Now a thousand tongues are heard in a loud din:/The Monkey's imitators rush discordant;/There were chatter, smiles, murmurs, chatter all, And Noise and Norton, Brangling and Brevall, Dennis and Dissonance, and Specious Art'[ .] [Book II,227-231]The alliteration has to be overcome here, as the lines move quickly from the 't' sounds through to the 'n' and 'b' sounds, making it a mouthful to read, especially aloud. On this point of difficulty in reading the poem, Aubrey L. Williams surmises that "the materials of story and personality are so heavy and occasionally so unassimilated that the organizing principles and central themes of the poem sometimes struggle painfully through the mass details, if at all.' While this comes across as a criticism of Pope's style, this confusion or struggle can usefully be seen as a deliberate stylistic excess, used as part of the poem's emphasis on the overcrowding of the literary world, mirroring the way he perceives his own world literary. a chattering 'mass' of bad work. Pope sees "a thousand tongues" as negative, strongly supporting Dryden's succinct decree: "Learn to write well, or not write at all", and suggesting that for an age to remember, it is better to have a "tongue" as proficient as if Homer produced great works rather than "a thousand" works of poor quality, as he saw in his contemporary world ""little hope of maintaining the principles and standards of literature, largely derived from the classical past" "[.] In looking to the two satires' representations of excess, Barbara Benedict's notion of "the material replacing morality" seems particularly appropriate, for it was not simply that the "trophies" or valuables of Homer's Iliad had degenerated in thin locks of hair. , but also that the material elements of things were examined excessively, denying good or moral satisfaction. For example, at one point in the Dunciad Pope turns his attack on Sir Thomas Handmer, who edited Shakespeare in exceptionally elaborate editions: "The dignified knight with sober anger withdrew, / 'What! no respect, he cried, for Shakespeare's page/but (happy for him, as the times were then)/the mayor and aldermen of Apollo appeared,/on whom three hundred golden-capped youths wait,/to drag the tin 'excessive volume in state'.[Book IV,.