page_title: Bathos
section_title: 17th and 18th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Bathos / Alexander Pope's definition / 17th and 18th centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: William Hogarth - The Bathos
context_page_description: Bathos is a literary term, first used in this sense in Alexander Pope's 1727 essay "Peri Bathous", to describe an amusingly failed attempt at presenting artistic greatness. Today, bathos refers to rhetorical anticlimax—an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one—occurring either accidentally or intentionally. Intentional bathos appears in satirical genres such as burlesque and mock epic. "Bathos" or "bathetic" is also used for similar effects in other branches of the arts, such as musical passages marked ridicolosamente. In film, bathos may appear in a contrast cut intended for comic relief or be produced by an accidental jump cut.
context_section_description: Bathos as Pope described it may be found in a grandly rising thought that punctures itself: Pope offers one "Master of a Show in Smithfield, who wrote in large Letters, over the Picture of his Elephant:
  "This is the greatest Elephant in the World, except Himself."
  Several decades before Pope coined the term, John Dryden had described one of the breath-taking and magically extravagant settings for his Restoration spectacular, Albion and Albanius (1684–85):
  "The cave of Proteus rises out of the sea, it consists of several arches of rock work, adorned with mother of pearl, coral, and abundance of shells of various kinds. Through the arches is seen the sea, and parts of Dover pier."
  Pope himself employed this type of figure intentionally for humor in his mock-heroic Rape of the Lock, where a lady would be upset at the death of a lover "or lapdog."  Søren Kierkegaard, in The Sickness Unto Death, did the same thing, when he suggested that the "self" is easy to lose and that the loss of "an arm, a leg, a dog, or a wife" would be more grievous.  When intended, this is a form of satire or the literary figure of undercutting.  When the context demands a lofty, serious, or grand interpretation, however, the effect is bathos.
  In 1764, William Hogarth published his last engraving, The Bathos, or the Manner of Sinking in Sublime Paintings inscribed to Dealers in Dark Pictures, depicting Father Time lying exhausted in a scene of destruction, parodying the fashion at that time for "sublime" works of art, and satirising criticisms made of Hogarth's own works.  It may also be seen as a vanitas or memento mori, foreshadowing Hogarth's death six months later.  Headed Tail Piece, it was intended as the tailpiece for a bound edition of Hogarth's engravings.
caption: Hogarth's The Bathos
exif: {}