Burlesque
Quick answer: Burlesque is comic imitation built on mismatch: grand style for trivial subjects or low style for grand ones. Learn high and low burlesque, with examples.
Burlesque is a mode of comic imitation built on a deliberate mismatch between style and subject: either a lofty, ceremonious style applied to something trivial, or a low, vulgar style applied to something grand. The word comes through French from the Italian burla, a joke or trick. Long before it named a variety show, burlesque was a literary term, and in poetry it still is.
Critics traditionally split the mode in two. High burlesque dresses a small subject in grand robes: the mock epic that treats a stolen lock of hair like the fall of Troy. Low burlesque, sometimes called travesty, drags a grand subject into the gutter: gods bickering like market traders. Both directions get their laughter from the same source, the audible gap between manner and matter.
How It Works
Burlesque is a machine with two settings. Set it high, and you inflate: invoke the muses over a burnt lasagne, give the microwave an epic simile, arm the dinner guests like Homeric captains. An original flash of the method: 'Sing, kettle, of the wrath of half past seven.' Set it low, and you deflate: retell a coronation in playground slang, let destiny complain about its shift patterns.
The style must be sustained with a straight face. The moment the poem winks, the spell breaks; burlesque works because the mismatched register is maintained with total, solemn commitment while the subject squirms inside it.
Where You Will See It
Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' is the peak of high burlesque in English, deploying the full epic arsenal, invocations, battles, supernatural machinery, over a snipped curl. Samuel Butler's 'Hudibras' rides low burlesque hard, its jogging doggerel couplets mocking Puritan solemnity. Byron's 'Don Juan' slides between registers stanza by stanza. The nineteenth-century stage borrowed the word for shows that travestied famous plays, which is how the term later drifted toward variety entertainment.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Pick your direction first. High burlesque suits domestic and digital trivia, inbox zero as grail quest, the group chat as war council, because modern life supplies endless small things that feel enormous. Low burlesque suits deflating pomposity wherever it struts. Then commit absolutely to the register: full epithets, full ceremony, or full slang, no half measures.
Underneath the joke, aim at something. The best burlesque, like Pope's, uses the mismatch to measure a society's sense of proportion, what it treats as epic and what it ignores, and that measurement can carry real feeling. A burlesque with a point outlasts a burlesque with only a costume.
What poets can take from this
- Choose one direction, inflation or deflation, and hold it for the whole poem.
- Sustain the mismatched register with a straight face; never wink.
- Use epic conventions (invocation, epithet, simile, catalogue) as your high-style toolkit.
- Let the mismatch make a point about proportion, not just a joke.
- Keep it short unless the target can feed the joke for pages; mismatch tires faster than wit.
Try it yourself
Write a mock-epic account of the most trivial conflict in your household this month, complete with an invocation, one extended simile and a catalogue of combatants. Minimum grandeur: maximum stakes of one remote control.
Questions
What is the difference between burlesque and parody?
Parody imitates a specific work or author, exaggerating its features. Burlesque targets the relationship between style and subject, inflating or deflating without needing one particular model. Pope's mock epic burlesques the epic manner generally rather than parodying a single poem.
What are high and low burlesque?
High burlesque applies a grand style to a trivial subject, as in mock epic. Low burlesque, or travesty, applies a low style to a grand subject. The joke in both is the mismatch; only the direction differs.
Is literary burlesque related to burlesque shows?
Yes, by descent. Nineteenth-century theatrical burlesques were comic travesties of famous plays and operas; the variety entertainment that inherited the name kept the spirit of irreverent send-up while the literary sense continued separately.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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