Mockery

The Mockery of the Owl: a 17th-century painting by Jan van Kessel the Elder, loosely depicting a scene from the 13th-century poem, The Owl and the Nightingale, in which the owl is mocked for its characteristics by other birds.

Mockery or mocking is the act of insulting or making light of a person or other thing, sometimes merely by taunting, but often by making a caricature, purporting to engage in imitation in a way that highlights unflattering characteristics. Mockery can be done in a lighthearted and gentle way, but can also be cruel and hateful. Mockery appears to be unique to humans, and serves a number of psychological functions, such as reducing the perceived imbalance of power between authority figures and common people. Examples of mockery can be found in literature and the arts.

Quotes

• Fielding Mellish: I object, Your Honor! This trial is a travesty! It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham!
  • Woody Allen, Bananas (1971).

• Freedom means that you have the right to do a certain thing; but if you have no opportunity to do it, that right is sheer mockery.
  • Alexander Berkman, What Is Communist Anarchism? (1929), Chapter 14: "The February Revolution".

• Though I were gifted with an angel's tongue,
  And voice like that with which the prophets sung,
  Yet if mild charity were not within,
  'T were all an impious mockery and sin.
  • Lucretia Maria Davidson, Charity (c. 1825).

• A delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
  • Thomas Denman, 1st Baron Denman, O'Connell v. The Queen (1841), 11 Clark and Finnelly Reports.

• And bear about the mockery of woe
  To midnight dances and the public show.
  • Alexander Pope, To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, line 57.

• It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another.
  • Dora Russell, The Right to Be Happy (1927), preface.

• Misery makes sport to mock itself.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act II, scene 1, line 85.

• O that I were a mockery king of snow,
  Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
  To melt myself away in water drops!
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act IV, scene 1, line 260.

• Perséverance, dear my lord,
  Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
  Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
  In monumental mockery.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (1623), Ulysses, scene iii.

• The spirit, Sir, is one of mockery.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Suicide Club", New Arabian Nights (1882).

See also

• Bullying
• Ridicule