Home › Glossary › Letter K

Kitsch

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Kitsch refers to art or sentiment that is overly sentimental, formulaic, and emotionally manipulative, lacking authenticity.

Detailed Definition
Poets critique or ironically deploy kitsch to expose cultural clichés or false emotions. Postmodern verse often juxtaposes kitsch with high art to question taste, commodification, and the erosion of genuine feeling in mass culture.
Example
Example in poetry:
Sylvia Plath’s "Daddy" uses nursery rhyme tone to critique fascist sentimentality as kitsch; Frank O’Hara’s "Having a Coke with You" contrasts authentic love with "silly movies" and romantic clichés; W.H. Auden’s "Musée des Beaux Arts" notes how suffering happens while dogs "go on with their doggy life"—kitsch as distraction; kitsch appears in poetic parody, like Alexander Pope’s "The Rape of the Lock," mocking aristocratic vanity; kitsch is subverted in Tracy K. Smith’s "The United States Welcomes You," where patriotic slogans mask violence.
Additional Notes
Kitsch (Greenberg) is mass-produced sentiment that replaces authentic emotion with cliché; poets use or critique it—Plath’s nursery rhymes, O’Hara’s pop culture; useful for analyzing how poems distinguish genuine pathos from manipulative sentimentality, especially in elegy, love poetry, or political verse that risks oversimplification.
Also Known As
Sentimentality Tastefulness (ironically) Bad Taste
Skip to main content