Parody

Parody is a term used since ancient Greece to denote the comic reworking of other serious, heroic, or epic works. This entry provides a historical perspective of the various definitions and uses of parody in the arts.

Derived from the noun for ode and prefix para (meaning “near to” and “opposite”), the word parodia was applied early on to mock-heroic epics such as the Batrachomyomachia or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, in which the eponymous creatures are given roles accorded human heroes in the Homeric epics. Such mock-heroic epics (see also Aristotle’s Poetics from the 4th century BCE on Hegemon of Thasos, a near contemporary of Aristophanes) have also been described as travesties, following Lalli’s Eneide travestita (Virgil’s Aeneid travestied) of circa 1634.

The word travesty in fact translates from the Italian travestire, meaning “to disguise” or “reclothe,” and has been used as an alternative to the terms parody and mock-heroic epic. Some critics have nonetheless tried to distinguish parody and travesty as high and low burlesque. These writers argue that parody as high burlesque imitates the [Page 553]form of the original while replacing its content with a more trivial subject matter, which is thereby elevated to a higher status, whereas travesty as low burlesque changes the manner of the original in an overall more mocking or familiar way. Both form and content of the original are, however, imitated and reworked for comic effect in ancient parody as well as in post-Renaissance travesty, and for a variety of purposes.

Modern Italian dictionary translations for the English word travesty give parodia as the Italian equivalent for that term. In the early 20th century, the word spoof transferred from a game of bluff to examples of parody. Whereas the mock-heroic epic can be described as a genre, parody may best be understood as a technique used for the comic reworking of other genres rather than as a distinct genre in itself. Devices used by the parodist to obtain a comic effect include ironic or satiric juxtaposition, transference, or, more generally, subtraction and addition.

The term paratragodein (or paratragoedia) was also used by the ancient Greeks to describe parody in drama, one notable example of which is The Frogs by Aristophanes (ca. 450–ca. 388 BCE), in which the tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides vie for supremacy over each other and parody is used to mock both. Here, parody is also used in ironic metafictional ways (the dramatists represented on stage are unaware that parody is being used by Aristophanes to both mock their styles and to create a new type of comedy from their works) and to satirize the audience of other, less complex forms of comedy. Ancient Greek use of the term parody was also extended to cover works in prose or speech (see Quintilian’s 1st century CE Institutio Oratoria on parodia and parode).

The use of parody as a comic but also metafictional device for the creation of new, more sophisticated fictional works of comedy is one that was developed most notably in the early 17th century by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) in his Don Quijote (1630). In this work, books of chivalry are satirized and made part of a more complex metafictional work when the heroic dreams of their all too avid reader Don Quijote are revealed as delusions by his family and servant Sancho Panza as well as by the narrator. The “hero” of Cervantes’s work is also shown to be yet another fictional character by the appearance of readers of volume 1 as characters in volume 2, who recognize and praise Don Quijote for his adventures.

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