Nerdotopia

Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast, When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last; Or when rich China vessels, fall’n from high, In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!               Excerpted from the Canto 3 of the Rape of the Lock by the acclaimed satirist, Alexander Pope explicates a burlesque of the vanities and idleness of the 18 th Century elite society portrayed in this epic, parodying the great classical epics. The allegory recalls a scandalous incident that occurred in the upper class society between two estranged families who had formerly been friends: Lord Petre had cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor’s hair. A common acquaintance; John Caryll proposed Pope to write a humorous poem to make a jest of the incident and laugh them together again. The masterpiece gives us a depiction of a fashionable idle socie...