Pastiche is a French word that began to be used regularly in English in the 1880s and 1890s. In 18th-century France, it meant a work of art imitating another author’s style. The French word was derived from the Italian pasticcio, meaning (from late Latin antiquity) a kind of mixed pastry, then indicating a musical form made up of various parts imitated from other composers. The English “pastiche” still shows these two influences: the “musical medley” meaning and more generally the idea of a “hodgepodge” or incongruous mixture derived directly from the Italian term, whereas the Oxford English Dictionary definition of pastiche as “an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period” comes from French. It must be noted right ...