Bathos

Bathos (Gr. βάθος), properly depth, the bottom or lowest part of anything. The current usage for an anticlimax, a descent “from the sublime to the ridiculous,” from the elevated to the commonplace in literature or speech, is due to Pope’s satire on Bathos (Miscellanies, 1727-1728), “the art of sinking in poetry.” The title was a travesty of Longinus’s essay, On the Sublime, Περὶ ὔψους.

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