Bathos

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Domains

Literary Concept
Poetic/ rhetorical term

Dates

Date of occurrence 1700

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Bathos comes from the Greek for deep (as in bathyscape, bathymetric) and in the arts refers to an abrupt descent from the exalted to the banal, either in style or content. At best this is deliberate, as in satires where the figure is most often found. For example, in Canto III, ll.1-8, I of The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope builds a grand image of Hampton Court — one of the major palaces of the British monarch and situated on the Thames to the west of London— only to bring it crashing down to the domestic and everyday:

Close by those meads, for ever crowned with flowrs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towrs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighbring …

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280 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Bathos". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 November 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=99, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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Bathos

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