Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“What mighty contests rise from trivial things,”
- Source
- The Rape of the Lock
- Date
- 1717
- Local voice
- Poetic speaker · Mock-heroic narrator
Meaning of “What mighty contests rise from trivial things,”
The mock-heroic opening announces the poem’s central comic method: treating a small social quarrel with the scale and language of epic conflict.
Where does it come from?
The Rape of the Lock, Canto I, line 2 in the 1717 recension. The retained catalog wording ‘What mighty contests rise from trivial things’ is verified in The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), scan page 157; the 1714 second edition instead reads ‘What mighty Quarrels rise from trivial things,’ so the synchronized source year is 1717. The line is part of Pope’s mock-heroic invocation and should be read as satire.
Why the local voice matters
The Rape of the Lock, Canto I, expanded five-canto version; the line is part of Pope’s mock-heroic invocation and should be read as satire.
