A mock-epic pastoral poem

Answer 1

A mock epic or mock pastoral poem are not necessarily the same thing, though they could be. In a broad sense, the mock epic is a poem that satirizes epic poetry's form and style of the classical era. This was a popular technique in the neo-classical era (the 18th century) commonly seen in the works of Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift, among others. These poets would use the "heroic couplet" in their poems, much like in the classic epic works of Virgil or Joyce. The heroic couplet simply means following an AA rhyme scheme with each two lines, and usually concluding with the heroic triplet. Another technique of the mock epic was to take a relatively minor situation, such as cutting one's hair or an impending rainstorm, and using grandiose language to exaggerate the importance of the event. The mock pastoral often utilizes many of these techniques, but a difference between the two is that the mock pastoral focuses more exclusively on a praise of nature and/or love rather than politics or any other topic, whereas the mock epic can focus on a range of issues. Pastoral poems were also frequent during the classical era as a means of expressing pleasure in life and nature, but during the 18th century poets like Dryden, Pope and Swift considered the revival of pastoralist poetry to be shallow and dishonest. Culture had changed significantly by then, and nature was no longer such a clean beautiful thing. Since these poets considered the main purpose of art to be educating their people on morals and truth, they concluded dishonest poetry was foolish, and irresponsible. The mock pastoral poems would also tend to take a situation in nature, and turn it on its head by bringing light to the often crude and disgusting atmosphere so prominent in the 18th century. This was a pretty legitimate technique, considering they were still about 100 years from soap, and people threw their chamber pots into the streets every night