In Cantos II and III, assess the importance of the sylphs in our understanding of Pope's attitude to his subject in The Rape of the Lock.

Identifying the author's attitude toward the subject of a
literary work may be a difficult task. The author's attitude can only be inferred from
the narrator's tone. Additionally, it may be confirmed through elements contributing to
the story's mood (setting, characterizations, descriptions, diction, etc.). Therefore,
to find the attitude of Pope toward the subject matter in The Rape of the
Lock, the first step is to determine the tone.

The
narrator's tone is established by vocabulary, phrasing, diction, and sentence structure.
Incidentally, mood is very different from tone in that mood paints the feeling of the
characters within the story. For example, a story may have a frightening mood but an
objective narratorial tone as in some stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

To
reiterate, the narrator's tone can give inference to the author's attitude toward the
subject matter. In The Rape of the Lock the narratorial tone is a
lightly jesting tone of both ridicule and praise. You can see this from the opening
lines in the words am'rous, trivial, slight,
praise:

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What dire Offence from am'rous Causes
springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial
Things,
[...]
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise, ....
(Canto I)

When Pope turns to
talking about a fair maiden's dressing ritual aided by sylphs in Canto II, then to the
protection granted by Ariel and his fairies in Canto III, this tone is heightened. Thus
the inference of Pope's attitude is clarified.

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To Fifty chosen Sylphs, of special
Note,
We trust th' important Charge, the Petticoat: (Canto
II)

anxious Ariel sought
The close Recesses of the Virgin's
thought;
As on the Nosegay in her Breast reclin'd,
He watch'd th'
Ideas rising in her Mind, (Canto
III)

To an audience steeped
in reading classical mythology, the mythological allusion to and image of sylphs
attending a fair maiden's dressing table under the instruction of Ariel would evoke
humor and laughter, thus pointing at the author's attitude. However, for contemporary
readers, the sylphs and others of Ariel's legions make a less significant impact
because, in large part, contemporary readers are not well versed in classical reading in
the way literate members of the English upper classes were in the 1800s.

The introduction of the sylphs by Pope is an important indication of
the attitude with which Pope addresses the subject of the theft of Belinda's lock of
hair--incidentally, the poem is based upon a true event that caused a temporary feud
between two families. From the tone and from the clarification provided by the mythical
allusion to sylphs, it may be inferred that Pope's attitude toward the theft of
Belinda's lock is one of gentle chiding ridicule that such a relative trifle should so
severely divide two families. It may further be said that the mythical allusion to
sylphs adds greatly to revealing the attitude of gentle ridicule in Pope's chiding poem,
The Rape of the Lock.