Page "Mock-heroic" Paragraph 12

Poet Laureate John Dryden is responsible for some of the dominance among satirical genres of the mock-heroic in the later Restoration era.

While Dryden's own plays would themselves furnish later mock-heroics ( specifically, The Conquest of Granada is satirized in the mock-heroic The Author's Farce and Tom Thumb by Henry Fielding, as well as The Rehearsal ), Dryden's MacFlecknoe is perhaps the locus classicus of the mock-heroic form as it would be practiced for a century to come.

In that poem, Dryden indirectly compares Thomas Shadwell with Aeneas by using the language of Aeneid to describe the coronation of Shadwell on the throne of Dullness formerly held by King Flecknoe.

The parody of Virgil satirizes Shadwell.

Dryden's prosody is identical to regular heroic verse: iambic pentameter closed couplets.

The parody is not formal, but merely contextual and ironic.

( For an excellent overview of the history of the mock-heroic in the 17th and 18th centuries see " the English Mock-Heroic poem of the 18th Century " by Grazyna Bystydzienska, published by Polish Scientific Publishers, 1982.