Thursday, June 5, 2014

Explain these lines from The Rape of the Lock: "Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, with singing, laughing, ogling, and all that."

The two lines you have cited are from the third canto of
Pope's mock-heroic poem, The Rape of the
Lock.


As Belinda is about to play the game of
Ombre, the narrator of the poem gives out the characteristic features of the Hampton
Court where in a chamber the card game is going to be played out. The lines cited
suggest in a mock-serious vein the ambiance of the Court chambers as characterised by
fashionable habits and trivial acts of flippancy and flirtation, an ambiance obviously
mismatched with that of a place of royal gravity and
reputation.


The lines refer to the habit of snuff-taking by
the idling men. There are further references to the decorative fans in the hands of the
pretty women like Belinda, the fashionable habit of singing, the flirtatious laughing
and ogling of eyes. Conversations are intricately punctuated with all these habitual and
gestural signals that tend to suggest the levity of the situation loaded with amorous
and erotic overtures.

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