Abstract:
The vast diversity of the proposed definitions of parody, both before and after the twentieth century, can be an emblem of the lack of a thorough agreement amongst the literary critics about the definition of this literary technique (genre?!). While there is not a comprehensive all-accepted definition of parody, modern and postmodern literatures both exhibit a wide application of it. After looking at the definition of parody under Bakhtin’s dialogic concepts, Genette’s structuralist viewpoints, and Barthes’s poststructuralist notions this study endeavours to put forward a more comprehensive and more applicable definition of parody mainly based on Bakhtin’s dialogic criticism. Parody then can be defined as a deliberate imitation or transformation of a socio-cultural product (including literary and non-literary texts, and utterance in its very broad Bakhtinian understanding of it) that recreates its original subject having at least a playful stance towards it.
Machine summary:
After looking at the definition of parody under Bakhtin’s dialogic concepts, Genette’s structuralist viewpoints, and Barthes’s poststructuralist notions this study endeavours to put forward a more comprehensive and more applicable definition of parody mainly based on Bakhtin’s dialogic criticism.
Parody then can be defined as a deliberate imitation or transformation of a socio-cultural product (including literary and non-literary texts, and utterance in its very broad Bakhtinian understanding of it) that recreates its original subject having at least a playful stance towards it.
Bakhtin’s dialogic criticism, Gerard Genette’s structuralist By accepting a range of original subjects for parody, Bakhtin classifies it into some different kinds.
Parody, based on Genette’s point of view, uses only transformation in relation to its original subject; transformation is considered to exist only for individual texts, not for genres and styles.
Regarding the definition of parody from Barthes’s view point about author will result in declining a particular author’s manner, matter, or style as being the original subject of parody.
In other words, the attitude of that text towards kinds of parody based on its hypotext, such as genre parody, satyr play, parodia sacra, etc.
Following the lead of Bakhtin, the proposed definition of parody considers a range of subjects as the hypotexts of parody.
The existence of many definitions put forward by different authors especially in the twentieth century few of which can be detected in Genette’s Palimpsestes: Literature in the Second Degree, Rose’s Parody: ancient, modern, and postmodern, Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, Danes’s Parody: Critical Concepts Versus Literary Practices, Dentith’s Parody, Jump’s Burlesque, etc.