mock-he·ro·ic

(mŏk′hĭ-rō′ĭk)

A satirical imitation or burlesque of the heroic manner or style.

mock′-he·ro′ic adj.

mock′-he·ro′i·cal·ly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

mock-heroic

adj

(Literary & Literary Critical Terms) (of a literary work, esp a poem) imitating the style of heroic poetry in order to satirize an unheroic subject, as in Pope's The Rape of the Lock

(Literary & Literary Critical Terms) burlesque imitation of the heroic style or of a single work in this style

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

mock′-hero′ic

adj.

1. imitating or burlesquing that which is heroic, as in manner, character, or action.

2. satirizing the heroic style of literature: a mock-heroic poem.

3. a literary work written in mock-heroic style.

[1705–15]

mock′-hero′ically, adv.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

mock-heroic - a satirical imitation of heroic verse

caricature, impersonation, imitation - a representation of a person that is exaggerated for comic effect

Translations

mock-heroic

[ˈmɒkhɪˈrəʊɪk] ADJ → heroicoburlesco

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

I fancy, also, that I must by this time have read the Odyssey, for the "Battle of the Frogs and Mice" was in the second volume, and it took me so much that I paid it the tribute of a bald imitation in a mock-heroic epic of a cat fight, studied from the cat fights in our back yard, with the wonted invocation to the Muse, and the machinery of partisan gods and goddesses.

View in context

Andrew Litton and his Norwegian orchestra perform this later version, very convincingly, as a slyly comic mock-heroic piece with the opening movement's Allegro eroicoepisode clearly revealed as a send-up and the risoluto finale ironically undercut.

SOUND JUDGEMENT; THE LATEST ALBUM RELEASES RATED AND REVIEWED

"I remember starting Aurora Dawn, the novel, as sheer fun, taking the mock-heroic voice of Henry Fielding and capering around in it with sophomoric exuberance." And then a new captain took over Wouk's ship; intimations of Captain Queeg found their way to Wouk's journals and consciousness, and a literary career began to stretch out into the future.

A life well-navigated

Discussion encompasses themes such as the artist in society, the Renaissance artist as hero, mock-heroic self-portraits, and the role of biography for serial self-portraitists.

The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History (reprint, 2014)

(3) Pope perfects his use of mock-heroic to achieve his dual satiric purpose of simultaneous admiration and critique: (4) for Maynard Mack, he "represents the absurdities of the fashionable world with affection," while never letting us "forget that in such a world ethical judgments have reached a sad disarray" when so much value is placed on "trifles." (5)

The Rape of the Whisker and Fuzwhiskiana: regrooming Pope's Rape of the Lock in early nineteenth-century Cambridge

This last characteristic suggests that the tone of the painting as a whole is that of the mock-heroic. Almost all its elements are characteristic of a moment of heroic action, but because these elements are exaggerated in expression they contribute to the painting's satiric character.

Hemingway in action: a Dos Passos painting from the 1924 Pamplona Fiesta

Georgievska-Shine and Silver underscore Velazquez's mock-heroic rhetoric as the corresponding narrative force to Rubens's mythological inventions (195).

Aneta Georgievska-Shine and Larry Silver. Rubens, Velazquez, and the King of Spain

The following two chapters cover 'The Renaissance Artist as Hero' and 'Mock-Heroic Self-Portraiture'.

Sense of self: Marcia Pointon enjoys a broad, original survey of the self-portrait

"The Filter of Attention and Indissoluble Attractors in EighteenthCentury Mock-Heroic Poetry".

Virgins, wives and whores in the eighteenth century ironic myths

The Taiping rebels were sometimes characterized as Christian revolutionaries, while at other times they were called savages and "mock-heroic buffoons" (97).

Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China

Within the limiting perspective of an adolescent, the drama is one of the character's own invention, and in turn, his mock-heroic walk through the woods is easily telescoped into insignificance by a skeptical reader.

Falcons on the Floor