Mock epic

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.

Historically, the mock-heroic style was popular in 17th century Italy, and in the post-Restoration and Augustan periods in Great Britain.

The earliest example of the form is the Batrachomyomachia ascribed to Homer and parodying his work although it is unlikely that it is by him.

A longstanding assumption on the origin of the mock-heroic in the 17th century is that epic and the pastoral genres had become used up and exhausted, and so they got parodically reprised. In the 17th century the epic genre was heavily criticized, because it was felt expressing the traditional values of the feudal society. Among the new genres, closer to the modern feelings and proposing new ideals, the satirical literature was particularly effective in criticizing the old habits and values. Beside the Spanish picaresque novels and the French burlesque novel, in Italy flourished the poema eroicomico.
In this country those who still wrote epic poems, following the rules set by Torquato Tasso in his work Discorsi del poema eroico (Discussions about the Epic Poems) and realized in his masterwork, the Jerusalem Delivered, were felt as antiquated.
The new mock-heroic poem accepted the same metre, vocabulary, rhetoric of the epics. However, the new genre turned the old epic upside down about the meaning, setting the stories in more familiar situations, to ridiculize the traditional epics. In this context was created the parody of epic genre.

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

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