Mock-heroic
Mock-heroic applies the elevated style and conventions of epic to trivial, comic, or otherwise unheroic subjects, creating humor through the mismatch.
Epic poetry: A long narrative poem about heroic deeds, legendary figures, or events of national significance. Mock-heroic borrows epic’s grand scale, elevated language, and heroic conventions.
The Rape of the Lock: Alexander Pope’s mock-heroic poem about a fashionable quarrel after a young man cuts a woman’s lock of hair. Pope turns a minor social offense into an elaborate epic conflict.
Mock-epic: A comic work that imitates epic conventions while treating an unheroic subject in an elevated manner. The terms are often used interchangeably, though mock-epic more directly names the epic parody.
Homer: The ancient Greek poet traditionally credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey. Mock-heroic writers borrow the epic scale and conventions associated with Homer.
Alexander Pope: An English poet and satirist whose major works include The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. Pope made mock-heroic a finely controlled instrument of social and literary satire.
Bathos: An abrupt descent from elevated or serious language to the trivial or commonplace. The mismatch between epic grandeur and a petty subject often produces this comic drop.
The Dunciad: Alexander Pope’s satirical poem depicting the triumph of dullness over literary and intellectual life. Its mock-epic machinery magnifies Pope’s attack on cultural dullness.
Heroicomic: A comic literary mode that combines heroic or elevated form with low, trivial, or ridiculous subject matter. This near-synonym emphasizes the collision of heroic form and comic content.
The Iliad: An ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer, recounting events in the Trojan War. Its battles, invocations, and heroic conflicts supplied material for comic imitation.
John Dryden: An English poet, playwright, and critic who wrote Mac Flecknoe and translated classical epics. Mac Flecknoe established a major English example of mock-heroic literary satire.