Which of these excerpts from Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" most explicitly suggests that it is a parody of epic poetry?

A. "Coffee makes the politician wise."

B. "He took the gift respectfully, and spread/the scissors open ... "

C. "Restore the lock! ' she cries; and all around ... "

D. "Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!"

The correct answer here would be D. The epics are long narrative poems which tell grand tales of the legendary heroes and their lives. Pope’s R. ape of the Lock is a mock-epic. This is a type of a poem which represents a minor, maybe even a banal event as something from an epic or a legend. The line "Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla’s fate!" is really out of place in a poem about the theft of a lock of hair. The man infatuated by a woman without her permission cuts of a lock of her hair which leads to the animosity between two families.