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What real event inspired The Rape of the Lock?
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Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope, portrait by Thomas Hudson, c. 1739; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
The Rape of the Lock was inspired by a real-life incident in which a young man surreptitiously cut off a lock of hair from a young woman, causing a serious rift between their two families.1
Alexander Pope wrote this mock-epic poem specifically to reconcile the estranged families by treating this trivial social transgression with the grand, elevated language typically reserved for epic historical events, such as the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans.1