Bathos

Created: April 27, 2021 1:32 PM
Forest status: #soil
Last Edited: 2022-12-31
Topics: Literary devices

Summary

Bathos is text that abruptly turns from serious and poetic, to regular and silly.

Examples of Bathos in literature

One of the most famous examples of bathos is found in Alexander Pope's poem "An Essay on Criticism":

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."

Another example is from William Wordsworth's poem "The Idiot Boy":

"He went to pluck a daffodil,
To place it in his bosom:—then he smiled,
And said 'How sweet the little flower appears!'"

Finally, an example from Lewis Carroll's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
"Alice had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet..."