A Meaning for Mock-Heroic

Abstract

For anyone concerned for the relations of poetry to the ‘real’ world, and with the power of poetry to transform the real, mock-heroic is, in fact, of special interest. By its very nature it indicates a discrepancy between reality on the one hand and, on the other, poetry, language, art; or rather, it announces that reality is being changed by art. By emphasising its means, by calling attention, that is, to its choice of event, of verse level, of vocabulary, to each of the moves by which it mimes the epic, it declares itself to be art and revels in the fact. True: since its aim is partly satiric, it will show, in one perspective, that the reality selected for the poem is unworthy of the artistry bestowed on it; yet, from another perspective, the positive transformation of that unworthy real is the process by which the poetry redeems as well as judges — the process, one might say, in which the poetry functions most inwardly as poetry.