The Eighteenth-Century Mock-Heroic Poem [Paperback]

This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre.This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre. In the first part, Ulrich Broich shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses - epic, comedy, parody, satire and occasional poetry. The second part traces the history of mock-heroic poetry.This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre. In the first part, Ulrich Broich shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses - epic, comedy, parody, satire and occasional poetry. The second part traces the history of mock-heroic poetry.Mock-heroic poetry is one of the most characteristic genres of English neoclassicism in the eighteenth century, including not only masterpieces such as Pope's The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad, but also numerous minor poems. This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions, and the history of the mock-heroic genre. Broich first shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses--epic, comedy, parody, satire, and occasional poetry. Later, he traces the history of mock-heroic poetry: its foreign sources, its beginnings in England, the rivalry with other forms of comic narrative, and its decline in the second half of the eighteenth century.Foreword; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. The Conventions of the Mock-Heroic Poem: 1. The presentation of contemporary reality; 2. The disguise and suspension of reality; 3. Imitation and parody of the epic; 4. The mock-heroic poem as satire; Part II. The History of the Mock-Heroic Poem: 5. Different types of mock-heroic poem and their pre-neoclassical models; 6. Boileau's Le Lutrin and the first phase of the genre's development in England (c. 1681  c. 1712); 7. Pope's The Rape of l³°