Rococo poetry favored graceful surfaces, pastoral settings, flirtation, miniature forms, and scenes of private amusement, often responding to the grand seriousness of earlier court and religious styles. Its polished wit could appear frivolous, but its attention to leisure, gender performance, consumption, and theatrical identity also registered important social changes. The mode influenced lyric, epigram, verse letters, and salon writing before giving way to more public and morally earnest sensibilities.

The Rococo Period developed in eighteenth-century Europe, especially in aristocratic and courtly settings, and is associated with elegance, pastel delicacy, flirtation, gardens, music, and private pleasure. Rococo poetry often uses playful tone, graceful description, sensual imagery, mythological ornament, and conversational intimacy rather than heroic seriousness. It overlaps with late Baroque culture but is generally lighter and less monumental. Related ideas include fête galante, pastoral fantasy, wit, and cultivated leisure.