Doggerel
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In literary criticism, the term burlesque is employed in genre criticism to describe any imitative work that derives humor from an incongruous contrast between style and subject. In this usage, forms of satire such as parody are types of burlesque (Abrams, 1999). The term came into English usage in the seventeenth century, through French from Italian burla, a trick or joke, burlesca. The word first appears in a title in Francesco Berni's Opere Burlesche, works that had circulated widely in manuscript before they were printed. For a time burlesque verses were known as poesie bernesca in his honour.
In this primary usage, High burlesque refers to a burlesque imitation where a serious style is applied to commonplace or comically inappropriate subject matter — as, for example, in the literary parody and the mock-heroic. Low burlesque applies an irreverent, mocking style to a serious subject; an example is Samuel Butler's Hudibras, which describes the misadventures of a Puritan knight in satiric doggerel verse, using a colloquial idiom. Pure burlesque is simply comedy; the addition of Butler's ethical subtext has made his caricatures into satire.
A burlesque literary performance is intentionally ridiculous in that it imitates several styles and combined imitations of certain authors and artists with absurd descriptions. In this, the term burlesque was often used interchangeably with 'pastiche', 'parody', and the seventeenth and eighteenth century genre of the 'mock-heroic'. Burlesque is an inherently social form, one that depends on the reader's contextual expectations. When a reader approaches burlesque without expectations, and the comedy needs to be explicated in a preface and annotations, the effect is blunted.
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