Word of the Week 03/29/20: Bathos

From Merriam-Webster:

1a. the sudden appearance of the commonplace in otherwise elevated matter or style
1b. anticlimax
2. exceptional commonplaceness
3. insincere or overdone pathos

The English use of the word bathos allegedly originates with the satirical essay "ΠΕΡΙ ΒΑΘΟΥΣ / or Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry / Written in the Year 1727" (first published March, 1728), by "Martinus Scriblerus," a fictional literary hack created by Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot, Jonathan Swift, and other members of the Scriblerus Club; authorship of the essay is usually ascribed to Pope. The Greek title (Perì báthous, "Concerning depth") echoes the title of the classical treatise "On the Sublime" (Perì hýpsous, literally, "Concerning height"), dated to the 1st century A.D. and formerly attributed to the 3rd century rhetorician Cassius Longinus. In Pope's essay, bathos—which, in the inverted perspective of the hack author, is a favorable quality—is used broadly to characterize literary passages deemed coarse or pedestrian for a genre such as epic poetry. The idea that bathos involves a shift from elevated to low is never stated explicitly—rather, a genre such as epic is by its nature elevated and the poetic execution (ironically praised by Scriblerus) is of low quality.

From LiteraryDevices.net:

Bathos is a literary term derived from a Greek word meaning “depth.” Bathos is the act of a writer or a poet falling into inconsequential and absurd metaphors, descriptions, or ideas in an effort to be increasingly emotional or passionate.

The term was used by Alexander Pope to explain the blunders committed inadvertently by unskilled writers or poets. However, later on, comic writers used it intentionally to create humorous effects. The most commonly used bathos involves a sequence of items that descend from worthiness to silliness.

From LiteraryDevices.com:

Alexander Pope created the term bathos in 1727 originally to criticize bad novelists and poets. The word bathos comes from the Greek word for “depth,” and Pope used this meaning both ironically and to imply a sense of the author “sinking” by using such ridiculous lines. The definition of bathos that he gave then was of attempts at appealing to the reader’s or audience’s emotions (i.e., pathos), but failing at creating a sense of the sublime to such an extent that the attempt becomes amusing. Bathos also has a sense of anticlimax because the reader expects a certain tone to continue—especially a lofty or grandiose tone—which quickly is replaced with a vulgar or common tone. 

ed note: pronounced Bay-thahss