Definition and Examples of Parody in English
Aparodybe a that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic result . Adjective :parodic. Informally known as aspoof.
Author William H. Gass observes that in most instance “ parody grotesquely exaggerates the outstanding and most annoying feature of its victim ” (A Temple of Texts, 2006 ) .
Etymology :From the Greek , “ beside ” or “ counter ” plus “ song ”
Model of Parodies
- “ Christmas Afternoon , ” by Robert Benchley
- “ How Shall I Phrase It ? ” by Max Beerbohm
- “ Jack and Gill : A Mock Criticism , ” by Joseph Dennie
- “ A Meditation Upon a Broomstick , ” by Jonathan Swift
- “ The Almost Popular Book of the Month , ” by Robert Benchley
- “ Shakespeare Explain : Carrying on the System of Footnotes to a Silly Extreme , ” by Robert Benchley
- “ Some Historians , ” by Philip Guedalla
- “ You ! ” by Robert Benchley
Examples and Observation
“[ P ] arodyworks only on masses who know the original , and they have to know it intimately plenty to appreciate the finer touches as well as the liberal accident of the imitation . Region of the enjoyment mass take in parody is the enjoyment of feel intelligent . Not everyone come the joke : if you serve n’t already know about the peach , you wo n’t laugh at the prune . It ‘s fantasy baseball for bookworms . ” ( Louis Menand , “ Parodies Lost . ”The New Yorker, Sep. 20 , 2010 )
Lewis Carroll ‘s Parody of a Poem by Robert Southey
- “ ‘You live old , Father William , ’ the young human cried ;
‘ The few locks which are left you cost grey ;
You are hale , Father William — a hearty old man :
Now tell me the ground , I pray . ’
“ ‘ In the day of my youth , ’ Father William replied ,
‘ I recollect ’ d that youth would flee tight ,
And Abus ’ d not my health and my energy at first ,
That I never might need them at final . ‘ . . . ”
( Robert Southey , “ The Old Man ‘s Comforts and How He Gained Them , ” 1799 )
- “ ‘ You live former , Father William , ’ the young human said ,
‘ And your hair has become very white ;
And yet you incessantly bear on your head —
Do you think , at your age , it live correct ? ’
” ‘ In my youth , ’ Father William reply to his boy ,
‘ I feared it might hurt the wit ;
But , now that I ’ m perfectly certain I get none ,
Why , I do it again and again . ‘ . . . ”
( Lewis Carroll ,Alice ‘s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 )
Lord of the RingParody
- “ ‘And that son of his , Frito , ‘ added bleary-eyed Nat Clubfoot , ‘as crazy as a woodpecker , that one cost . ‘ This was verified by Old Poop of Backwater , among others . For who own n’t hear young Frito , walk aimlessly through the crooked street of Boggietown , carrying little clump of flower and muttering about ‘truth and beauty ‘ and blurting out silly nonsense like ‘Cogito ergo boggum ? ‘ ” ( H. Beard ,The Harvard Lampoon,Bored of the Rings, 1969 )
Characteristics of Parodies
- “ [ M ] ostparodyworthy of the epithet cost ambivalent toward its target . This ambivalence may mean not only a mixture of criticism and sympathy for the parodied text , but also the creative expansion of it into something new . Most other of the specific characteristic of parody , include its universe of funny incongruity between the original and the parody , and the way in which its comedy can laugh both at and with its mark , may exist traced to the style in which the parodist do the object of the parody a role of the parody ‘s structure . ” ( Margaret A . Rose ,Parody : Ancient , Modern , and Post-Modern. Cambridge University Press , 1993 )
Six Parodies of Ernest Hemingway
- “ Most of the tricks were good tricks and they bring fine for a while particularly in the short stories . Ernest cost stylish in the hundred-yard dash but he did n’t make the wind for the long material . Later on on the tricks did not seem hence well . They were the same tricks but they were not novel any more and zero equal bad than a trick that that make become stale . He knew this but he could n’t invent any fresh tricks . ” ( Dwight Macdonald ,Against the American Grain, 1962 )
- “ I go out into the room where the chimney live . The little man came down the chimney and stepped into the room . He live dressed all in fur . His clothes exist cross with ashes and soot from the chimney . On his rear was a pack like a peddler ‘s pack . There cost toys in it . His cheek and nose were red and he had dimples . His eyes twinkled . His mouth exist little , like a bow , and his beard be very white . Between his teeth was a squat pipe . The smoke from the pipe encircled his top dog in a wreath . He laughed and his belly shook . It shook like a bowl of red jelly . I laughed . He winked his heart , then he gave a twist to his chief . He cause n’t allege anything . ” ( James Thurber , “ A Visit From Saint Nicholas ( In the Ernest Hemingway Manner ) . ”The New Yorker, 1927 )
- “ I roll into Searchlight around midnight and walked into Rosie ‘s beer joint to become a cold one after the ride over from Vegas . He was the first one I find . I looked at him and he stared back at me with those level blue center . He was giving me that sort of howdy wave with his serious right sleeve while his left sleeve hung armless from the shoulder . He was dress up like a cowboy . ” ( Cactus Jack , “ The One-Armed Bandit , ” 2006 “ Bad Hemingway ” competition )
- “ This equal my last and better and true and only meal , thought Mr. Pirnie as he go down at noon and swung east on the beat-up sidewalk of Forty-fifth Street . Just ahead of him be the miss from the reception desk . I be a short fleshed up around the criminal of the elbow , believe Pirnie , but I commute serious . ” ( E.B . White , “ Across the Street and Into the Grill . ”The New Yorker, Oct. 14 , 1950 )
- “ We had great fun in Spain that year and we traveled and write and Hemingway bring me tuna fishing and I catch four cans and we laugh and Alice Toklas require me if I was in honey with Gertrude Stein because I own dedicate a record of poem to her still though they were T. S. Eliot ‘s and I tell , yes , I enjoy her , but it could never bring because she was far too well-informed for me and Alice Toklas fit and then we place on some boxing gloves and Gertrude Stein broke my nose . ” ( Woody Allen , “ A Twenties Memory . ”The Insanity Defense, 2007 )
- “ In the late afternoon the Museum was even thither , but he equal not get to it any more . It live foggy in London that afternoon and the shadow came very early . Then the workshop turn their lighting on , and it was wholly correct depend on down Oxford Street await in the windows , though you could n’t meet a lot because of the fog . ” ( David Lodge ,The British Museum Equal Fall Down, 1965 )
David Lodge on Parody
- “ In a way , it may be impossible for writers themselves to identify what is parodiable in their own study . It may cost dangerous still to contemplate it . . . .
” One would suppose that any author who ‘s any good has a distinctive voice — distinctive feature of or vocabulary or something — which could live take over on by the parodist . ” ( David Lodge , “ A Conversation AboutThinks“ inConsciousness and the Novel. Harvard University Press , 2002 )
Updike on Parody
- “ Pureparodyis purely parasitic . There is no disgrace in this . We all begin spirit as parasite within the mother , and author begin their universe imitatively , within the torso of letter . ” ( John Updike , “ Beerbohm and Others . ”Sort out Prose. Alfred A. Knopf , 1965 )
Weird Al Yankovic ‘s Chamillionaire Parody
- “ Await at me , I ’ 1000 white and nerdy
I wan na roll with
The gangstas
But hence far they all guess I ’ m too white and nerdy
“ First in my class hither at MIT
Got skill , I ’ m a champion at D & D
MC Escher — that ’ s my favorite MC
Keep your 40 , I ’ ll just get an Earl Grey tea .
My rims never spin , to the contrary
You ’ ll find that they ’ re quite stationary .
All of my activity number are crimson
Steven Hawking ’ sec in my library .
My MySpace page exist all entirely pimped out
Got masses beggin ’ for my top eight space .
Yo , I know pi to a thousand spot
Ain ’ t got no grills but I yet put on braces . ”
( Weird Al Yankovic , “ White and Nerdy ” — parody of “ Ridin ‘ ” by Chamillionaire )
