ABSTRACT
Master Thribb, the satirical magazine Private Eye’s spoof schoolboy poet, clearly thinks that poetry is not the appropriate vehicle to do justice to the intricacies of his views on religion. Whether or not some subject-matter is beyond the capacities of verse, we can readily see that the tone struck by a poem needs to be appropriate to its content. Our merriment in reading E.J.Thribb comes from enjoying the disparity either between the dignity of his chosen topics and the banal inertia of his verse, or between the ambition to write high-flown verse and the trivial character of his concerns. It is exactly the disjunction that all parody uses to gain its effect, and by recognizing the incongruity we are also reminded of the importance of an appropriate fit between subject and tone of voice.
