SOURCE: “Faery Lore and The Rape of the Lock,” in Essays on Pope, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 27-36.

Rogers is a prominent literary historian specializing in eighteenth-century studies and a respected authority on Pope. In the following essay, which was originally published in 1974, the critic examines the role of the gnomes and the uses of other rustic “faery” lore traditions in The Rape of the Lock, highlighting the relevance of William Diaper's Dryades (1712) to Pope's final version of the poem.

Everyone knows that Pope added the machinery of sylphs and gnomes when he revised The Rape of the Lock in 1714. And most people—aside from John Dennis—think it was a valuable addition. However, the precise imaginative territory opened up by this means has never been charted in any detail.¹ The declared Rosicrucian origins of the machinery appear to have disabled criticism in a puzzling way. I wish...