Bathos Definition and Examples

Despite its name, 'bathos' has nothing to do with washing up. You can brush up on your vocabulary, though, in this lesson where we'll sink into the literary depths in search of bathos and some examples of this phenomenon.

Plumbing the Depths: Bathos Defined

Have you ever been the victim of that terrible prank where you're given a large 'present,' only to find that it contains some insignificant trinket? If you've experienced this heart-crushing disappointment, then you've witnessed a real-life version of bathos: a term describing the anticipation of significance in literature that is resolved in an insignificant way.

This Greek word originally indicated physical 'depths' (i.e. the ocean), but its use by Alexander Pope in 1728 brought the term a whole new application. That year he published a mock literary essay entitled Peri Bathous - a Greek phrase that Pope translated as On the Art of Sinking in Poetry for the subtitle. Throughout the work, he sarcastically discusses the tendency of his literary colleagues to strive for hypsos (Greek 'sublime,' 'height'), only to come crashing down into the depths (bathos). What Pope was observing in this phenomenon was a literary work's build-up to something of considerable artistic value that resolves in a typically absurd or otherwise disappointing fashion.

Pope knew that poets especially sought sophistication in their work; however, he also pointed out that they often fall short of this goal in often inadvertently hilarious ways. Bathos can be used deliberately, though, when authors wish to add an element of humorous dissatisfaction - especially when they want to parody those who have employed bathos unintentionally. Take a look at the examples below to see an intentional usage of bathos, as well as one that was supposed to be anything but!

Examples of Bathos

To Some Ladies

The Romantic Period, which saw its peak in the early 19th century, was a time of passionate artistic expression. In his To Some Ladies, John Keats displays the tendency of poets from this period to romanticize even the most mundane moments and things. However, this piece also displays how easy it was for these poets to get swept up in their own emotions, while leaving their audiences puzzled as to why.

Keats fills this poem with elevated language, and even invokes ancient and contemporary poetic influences. When we discover in the last two stanzas that the 'treasure' these ladies have brought him is a seashell (and some time lounging on the beach), though, we might strongly question 'Why all the hype?'

It had not created a warmer emotion

Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you,

Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean

Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.

For, indeed, 'tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,

(And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)

To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,

In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.

Northanger Abbey

At the same time that Keats was crafting his impassioned verses, another genre of literature was incorporating these same emotionally charged techniques into chilling tales. This 'Gothic' literature (i.e. Frankenstein, Dracula) frequently combined elements of horror with characteristically Romantic use of emotionally evocative language.

Jane Austen was also writing at this time, and she capitalized on this trend with Gothic authors by poking fun at their highly suspenseful scenes with a bathetic one of her own in Northanger Abbey. The novel's protagonist Catherine finds a suspicious trunk in her room, the contents of which drive her imagination wild. After much tense personal debate, Catherine finally opens the trunk, only to find neatly folded linens!

'Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing, with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches; but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming violence… Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession!'