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Bathos (UK: / ˈ b eɪ θ ɒ s / BAY-thoss; [1] Ancient Greek: βάθος, lit. "depth") is a literary term , first used in this sense in Alexander Pope 's 1727 essay " Peri Bathous ", [ 1 ] to describe an amusingly failed attempt at presenting artistic greatness .
In some cases, downplaying the ethos can be done while emphasizing pathos, for example as William Jennings Bryan did in his Cross of Gold speech: I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons.
Especially toward the end, absurdities spring up in battalions. The piece of dialogue that brings the picture to a close is an extreme example of bathos... The acting of the cast... is weak, and it goes at too slow a tempo, flying to the other extreme from the fault of jerky rapidity that used to mar local productions.
One example of Pope's style and satire shows in his description of sinking in painting. In the commonplace Academic hierarchic ranking of pictorial genres, still life ranked the lowest. However, Pope describes how it might fall and, with the single word "stiffen," evokes the unnatural deadness that is a mark of failure even in this "low" genre:
bathos Bathos refers to rhetorical anticlimax—an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one—occurring either accidentally (through artistic ineptitude) or intentionally (for comic effect). [27] [28] beast fable An "animal tale" or "beast fable" generally consists of a short story or poem in which animals talk.
Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor, self-aware humor, or meta humor, is a type of comedic expression [1] that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is self-referential in some way, intentionally alluding to the very person who is expressing the humor in a comedic fashion, or to some specific aspect of that same comedic expression.
Analogy – the use of a similar or parallel case or example to reason or argue a point. Anaphora – a succession of sentences beginning with the same word or group of words. Anastrophe – inversion of the natural word order. Anecdote – a brief narrative describing an interesting or amusing event.
One example of this is the poem "Paternoster", which is a recitation of The Lord's Prayer, but from the perspective of a draft horse. This could be an illustration of bathos or blasphemy , depending on the inclination of the reader.