The Eighteenth-Century Mock-Heroic Poem

by Ulrich Broich, David Henry Wilson (Translator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521144902
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/26/2010
Series:	European Studies in English Literature
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

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 the Lock (1712–14); 8. The Rape of the Lock and the heroi-comical poem (second phase, c. 1714 – c. 1742); 9. Pope's Dunciad (1728–43); 10. The decline and fall of the mock-heroic poem (third phase, c. 1742 – c. 1800); Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index of authors and titles.