Mock-heroic

Mock-heroic, mock-epic or heroi-comic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature.

Typically, mock-heroic works either put a fool in the role of the hero or exaggerate the heroic qualities to such a point that they become absurd.

Lo scherno degli dèi (The Mockery of Gods) by Francesco Bracciolini, printed in 1618 is often regarded as the first Italian poema eroicomico.

After the translation of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, English authors began to imitate the inflated language of Romance poetry and narrative to describe misguided or common characters.

Butler's poem describes a "trew blew" Puritan knight during the Interregnum, in language that imitates Romance and epic poetry.

For example, Butler describes the English Civil War as a time which "Made men fight like mad or drunk/ For dame religion as for punk/ Whose honesty all durst swear for/ Tho' not one knew why or wherefore" ("punk" meaning a prostitute).

Epics always include foreshadowing which is usually given by an otherworldly figure[citation needed], and Pope mocks tradition through Ariel the sprite, who sees some “dread event” (line 109) impending on Belinda.

He invokes the same Mock-heroic style in The Dunciad which also employs the language of heroic poetry to describe menial or trivial subjects.

In macaronic Latin enriched with Scottish Gaelic expressions William Drummond of Hawthornden wrote Polemo-Middinia inter Vitarvam et Nebernam in 1684.

The main author of mock-heroic poems in Polish was Ignacy Krasicki, who wrote Myszeida (Mouseiad) in 1775 and Monacomachia (The War of the Monks) in 1778.

The Bohemian poet Šebestiàn Hnĕvkovský in 1805 printed two mock-heroic poems: Dĕvin in Czech and Der böhmische Mägderkrieg in German.