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Mock-heroic poetry is one of the most characteristic genres of English neoclassicism in the eighteenth century. Derived from French models, the mock-heroic became something more than merely a parody of the serious epic: relieved of its gravity, it was nevertheless a legitimate and independent form of epic poetry. This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre. In the first part, Ulrich Broich shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses - epic, comedy, parody, satire and occasional poetry. The 'polyphonic' genre which emerges from this analysis stands in ironic contrast to the neoclassical ideal of decorum in a harmonious unity of discourse and form. The second part traces the history of mock-heroic poetry: its foreign sources, its beginnings in England, the 'rivalry' with other forms of comic narrative, and its decline in the second half of the eighteenth century.