Rococo art favors curling forms, delicate surfaces, pastoral scenes, flirtation, and an atmosphere of lightness or luxury. Though sometimes dismissed as merely decorative, it can also reveal social performance and instability beneath elegance. In poetry, rococo can describe lavish imagery, musical elaboration, and playful sensuality. A rococo poem may use ornament deliberately, allowing excess, charm, and intricate pattern to question the seriousness of its own beautiful surface.

Rococo flourished in eighteenth-century Europe, especially France, and is associated with lightness, elegance, asymmetry, curving ornament, pastel tones, intimate interiors, playful eroticism, and decorative motifs such as shells and foliage. It developed partly from late Baroque traditions but generally favoured smaller scale and a more graceful mood. In literary comparison, “rococo” may describe highly ornamental, witty, delicate, or deliberately artificial effects. Compare Baroque, arabesque, pastoral, fêtes galantes, ornament, asymmetry, decorative arts, elegance, court culture, and Neoclassicism.