mock-heroic
Pompously trivial style
Mock-heroic describes a style that applies the grand conventions of epic poetry—elevated language, invocations to muses, elaborate similes—to trivial or mundane subjects.
The effect is satirical: the gap between lofty treatment and lowly subject exposes pretension or creates comedy.
Pope's *The Rape of the Lock* treats a stolen lock of hair with the gravity of the Trojan War.
The mock-heroic tone made his account of losing his car keys genuinely funny.
Exaggerated mockery or risqué variety
- lampoonHarsh public mockery
- travestyAbsurd, degrading imitation
- caricatureExaggerated comic depiction
- spoofComic exaggerated imitation
send-up · takeoff · pastiche · imitation · mimicry · ridicule · bathos · deflation
Pretentious hollow language
- hyperboleRhetorical extreme exaggeration
- grandiloquencePompous, extravagant language
- magniloquenceBoastful, elevated language
- pomposityExaggerated sense of importance
inflation · overblown · turgid · florid · ornate · aureate · overwrought · orotund
Clever, inventive humor
- ironyMeaning opposite to words
- sarcasmIrony used to mock
- ridiculeContemptuous mocking treatment
- critiqueDetailed evaluative analysis
social commentary · folly · vanity · pretension · hubris · deflation · subversion · Augustan
burlesque
Exaggerated mockery or risqué variety
- lampoonHarsh public mockery
- travestyAbsurd, degrading imitation
- caricatureExaggerated comic depiction
spoof · send-up · takeoff · pastiche · imitation · mimicry · ridicule · bathos · deflation · absurdity
bombast
Pretentious hollow language
- hyperboleRhetorical extreme exaggeration
- grandiloquencePompous, extravagant language
- magniloquenceBoastful, elevated language
pomposity · inflation · overblown · turgid · florid · ornate · aureate · overwrought · orotund · fustian
wit
Clever, inventive humor
critique · social commentary · folly · vanity · pretension · hubris · deflation · subversion · Augustan · Swift
heroism
Exceptional courage under duress
invocation · Muse · Homer · Virgil · Milton · grandeur · elevated · lofty · noble · valor
- comedy writingjoke, jokes, comedy, satire, parody
- early literatureessay, novel, pamphlet, early novels, treatise
- literary stylespastoral, lyrical prose, satirical, poetic prose, lyrical
- poetry typeshaiku, sonnet, limerick, ballad, ode
- 18th-century literaturegothic novel, neoclassicism, picaresque, comedy of manners, Grub Street
- Augustan literatureAlexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Augustan age, The Rape of the Lock, neoclassicism
mock-heroicdecorous
Socially appropriate, dignified
fitting · proportionate · appropriate · proper · naturalistic