Genre
Mock-heroic
Derives from Virgil's Culex and Ovid's Battle of Frogs and Mice. The mode flourished in 18th-century England as a vehicle for social and political satire.
Definition
A poem that applies the elevated language and conventions of epic to a trivial or absurd subject for satirical effect.
Example
Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714): a young woman's cut curl treated as a Homeric battle.