Heroic couplets are rhyming lines of five iambic feet (refer to Blank verse for details of iambic pentamater). The heroic has often been used for comic purposes from the time of Chaucer, who originated it, and is referred to as mock-heroic in such circumstances.
In Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, the mock-heroic couplets are used for ironic effect:
‘What dire offence from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests arise from trivial things’
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