Provided it was intentional, of course, which this example was, clearly.
Ah, the intention of the Other. So, what is unintentional bathos? (In keeping with the rapidly declining standards of the age, Bath OS is a new, Britain-made operating system which runs on Somerset architecture computers.
Bathos is the introduction of some jarringly out-of-place idea that produces amusement in the reader/listener. Often analogies are used like Douglas Adams's The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
A naive writer will sometimes intoduce accidental bathos - from some excerpts I've read Dan Brown (The da Vinci Code, et al) is a prime source for unintended humour.
The notorious Scottish poetaster William McGonagall was also a great unconcious user of bathos. For example, from Jottings of New York:
quote:
Oh, mighty city of New York, you are wonderful to behold-- Your buildings are magnificent-- the truth be it told-- They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Oh, mighty city of New York, you are wonderful to behold-- Your buildings are magnificent-- the truth be it told-- They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high
Proof, if any be needed, that rhyme and meter don't necessarily make for good poetry.
On an aviation site that I frequent a writer described the climbing ability of a certain light airplane thus: "It has all the climbing ability of a homesick manhole cover." That upends the "homesick angel" analogy often heard, with great bathic - and comic- effect, IMHO.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
