Mock Epic
A mock epic is a literary genre that parodies the conventions of classical epic poetry by applying them to trivial or mundane subjects. It often uses grandiose language and exaggerated heroic themes to highlight the absurdity of the subject matter. Mock epics are known for their satirical and humorous treatment of everyday events, making them a popular form of literary satire.
3 Key excerpts on "Mock Epic"
eBook - ePubTransgressive Fiction
The New Satiric Tradition
- R. Mookerjee(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...They reflect an anti-evolutionary vision of culture. 3 Depending on one’s perspective, this makes Menippean satire either more dangerous or more relevant than heretofore thought since it undermines the paradigm-setting function of literature. The epic tradition contains beliefs that are foundational far past the time in which they are widely held to be true, since they give way to new beliefs through a process of imitation, criticism, repudiation, and revival. 4 Its works, if they follow Horatian aesthetics, are sententious, decorous, serious in subject matter, formal and consistent in design. Works in the epic tradition are likely to be consistent with the beliefs of the culture in which they were produced and patronized. They are usually understood to be more serious and important than their satiric counterparts: Virgil is more serious than Ovid; Lucan than Petronius; Dante than Boccaccio; Dr. Johnson than Swift; Coleridge than Byron. Along with Milton, Spenser and others, these poets are the backbone of the corpus exhumed in “Western Civilization” courses. In the romance tradition of the novel, the pattern largely holds. Fielding’s work transcends that of Richardson, but Pamela is seen as inaugural to the English novel and the celebrated realist school dominant from the nineteenth century to the present day. No one ever said that Don Quixote was inferior to its main source, the Castilian knight-errant story Amadis de Gaulle, but its reputation, has followed an Ovidian path. It was viewed as an entertainment until the extent of its influence became obvious when it surfaced in works like Butler’s Hudibras. If Menippean satire is Mock Epic, it may be seen as more independent than garden-variety satire; it is more than a response to a person, text, or issue...
eBook - ePubSatire
Origins and Principles
- Matthew Hodgart(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5 Forms of satire If satire is marked by its predilection for certain subjects, and by its special approach to these subjects, it is not limited to any special forms. Almost any literary form will serve, provided that it permits the characteristic combination of aggressive attack and fantastic travesty, and gives the satirist freedom to use some or all of the essential techniques that I have described. Most if not all of the existing literary genres have in fact been taken over for satiric purposes by means of parody, and, as we shall see, satire may be inserted to make self-contained episodes in plays and novels. Nevertheless there are certain forms that have been favoured by the satirists over many centuries, sometimes merely because of the conservativeness of literary tradition (such as formal satire), and sometimes because they offer particularly good possibilities for imaginative invention (such as Utopian and anti-utopian story). What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive list of the possible forms, but it will show some of the commoner and more interesting formal structures that have supported the satirist's vision. Formal satire: the classical tradition Formal satire is a miscellany in verse: in a loosely constructed monologue the poet denounces various kinds of vice and folly, and puts up against them his moral ideals. The subject matter is daily life, not heroic life, and this is treated realistically. The style is 'low', using not the elevated diction of epic and tragedy, but words and phrases from ordinary speech; and the tone tends to be conversational, rather than declamatory. Vice and folly are delineated in 'characters' which may be individual (as in the primitive lampoon) or representative; and the poet himself sometimes appears as a character, describing some event autobiographically or speaking through a mask or 'persona' which he assumes for the occasion...
...In this play we ought to be thinking of political man, clansman, and man of God. (Drama in the Sixties p. 88) This is an entirely new definition of drama; but it is also an exciting new view of epic. It does not, however, stray as far from the historical truth of epic as might at first be supposed. The point is put with admirable clarity by Martin Esslin in Brecht: a Choice of Evils (p. 110). He points out that Brecht intended his audience to be permanently aware that they were in a theatre, that they were not watching real events happening in front of them: They are to sit back, relax, and reflect on the lessons to be learnt from those events of long ago, like the audience of the bards who sang of the deeds of heroes in the houses of Greek kings or Saxon earls, while the guests ate and drank. Hence the term epic theatre. MODERN EPIC POETRY The epic is not commonly thought to have survived to our own day, though various works have been suggested as the last true epic. In fact, the form is still very much alive, and in a state of continual development. In the field of poetry, as has already been suggested, the characteristic twentieth-century form appears to be collage, a natural development of epic’s all-inclusiveness and discursiveness. Since the collage is used to build up a picture of the artist’s own environment, the great modern epics (Pound’s Cantos, Eliot’s Waste Land, William Carlos Williams’s Paterson, David Jones’s Anathemata) should better be described as detailed autobiographies. An early autobiographical epic (begun even before Don Juan) is Wordsworth’s Prelude. Taken together with The Recluse (of which a portion, The Excursion, was published in 1814) the two long poems constitute an impressive autobiography...
