@article{oai:nagoya.repo.nii.ac.jp:00027965, author = {Fujita, Kenji}, journal = {IVY}, month = {Oct}, note = {I do not need a genre as a panopticon, but as a useful device for interpreting texts. The power of genre is indispensable for the interpretation of text. As far as a genre is one f possible classifications, it is important to read a text in genres, not in a genre. Genres as intertextual discourses are ubiquitous in a text ; therefore the question of genre depends not on whether we can attribute a text to a genre but on whether we can utilize genre for interpretation. The Rape of the Lock undergoes the participation of lady à la mode. Belinda is a queen, an epic heroine, in the performative sense, and is also a butt of satire or a reprehensible sinner in the pedagogical sense of lady à la mode. However, the antinomy is not the privilege given to the mock-epic poetry, but is dependent on the de jure genre. Using the theory of genre, I attempt to interpret The Rape of the Lock. The point at issue is, as the title shows us, the term of "rape." In order to interrogate "why the Baron rapes the lock," why the plunder of the rock is depicted as a rape," and "what the rape is," I fabricate a kind of genre, the intertextual discourse of lady à la mode. Lady à la mode proves that the rape is a kind of moral sanction. Belinda commits the sin of deceit because of her excessive adornment which is against the virtue of physis. In the poems of lady à la mode, the quantitative problem of excess is related not only to the waste of materials but also to the moral virtue of female sexuality. Then, the Baron's attack fulfills a function of moral sanction against the lack of modesty in Belinda. Consequently, The Rape of the Lock is composed of the repressive power of discourse about female sexuality. Indeed, the actual models of Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre are replaced with the moral story about Belinda and the Baron. Through such a replacement, Arabella Fermor repressively becomes the sinner Belinda, and Lord Petre paradoxically becomes the heroic Baron. In this way, both the epic convention and the discourse about female sexuality function in The Rape of the Lock.}, pages = {33--60}, title = {The Game of Intertextuality : With Special Reference to The Rape of the Lock}, volume = {31}, year = {1998} }