y.

Transpose the solemn into the familiar and the result is parody. The
effect of parody, thus defined, extends to instances in which the idea
expressed in familiar terms is one that, if only in deference to
custom, ought to be pitched in another key. Take as an example the
following description of the dawn, quoted by Jean Paul Richter: "The
sky was beginning to change from black to red, like a lobster being
boiled." Note that the expression of old-world matters in terms of
modern life produces the same effect, by reason of the halo of poetry
which surrounds classical antiquity.

It is doubtless the comic in parody that has suggested to some
philosophers, and in particular to Alexander Bain, the idea of defining
the comic, in general, as a species of DEGRADATION. They describe the
laughable as causing something to appear mean that was formerly
dignified. But if our analysis is correct, degradation is only one form
of transposition, and transposition itself only one of the means of
obtaining laughter. There is a host of others, and the source of
laughter must be sought for much further back. Moreover, without going
so far, we see that while the transposition from solemn to trivial,
from better to worse, is comic, the inverse transposition may be even
more so.

It is met with as often as the other, and, apparently, we may
distinguish two main forms of it, according as it refers to the
PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS of an object or to its MORAL VALUE.

To speak of small things as though they were large is, in a general
way, TO EXAGGERATE. Exaggeration is always comic when prolonged, and
especially when systematic; then, indeed, it appears as one method of
transposition. It excites so much laughter that some writers have been
led to define the comic as exaggeration, just as others have defined it
as degradation. As a matter of fact, exaggeration, like degradation, is
only one form of one kind of the comic. Still, it is a very striking
form. It has given birth to the mock-heroic poem, a rather
old-fashioned device, I admit, though traces of it are still to be
found in persons inclined to exaggerate methodically. It might often be
said of braggadocio that it is its mock-heroic aspect which makes us
laugh.

Far more artificial, but also far more refined, is the transposition
upwards from below when applied to the moral value of things, not to
their physical dimensions. To express in reputable language some
disreputable idea, to t