Burlesque is a genre of literary, dramatic, or musical work that sets out to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of a serious work, or by treating its subject in a deliberately ludicrous way. The English word is borrowed from French, which in turn took it from the Italian burlesco, itself derived from burla, meaning a joke, a mockery, or ridicule. As a genre it covers a wide family of parody forms across different periods and cultures, of which the nineteenth-century English tradition known as Victorian burlesque is one specific branch.
Facts
Place of OriginItaly, where the term first appears in the title of Francesco Berni's early 16th century Opere burlesche 1 Notable ExampleSamuel Butler's Hudibras, a mock-heroic poem about a Puritan knight 1 Defining TraitHigh burlesque applies a literary, elevated manner to a commonplace or comically inappropriate subject matter. 1 Sources
1. Burlesque (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationTerminology section
High burlesque refers to a burlesque imitation where a literary, elevated manner was applied to a commonplace or comically inappropriate subject matter.
History section
The word first appears in a title in Francesco Berni's Opere burlesche of the early 16th century, works that had circulated widely in manuscript before they were printed.
English burlesque section
Samuel Butler's poem Hudibras, which describes the misadventures of a Puritan knight in satiric doggerel verse, using a colloquial idiom
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