Parody

Abstract Chapter 1 provides a historical overview of parody as it has been practised and theorized from Aristotle to the present day. It revels in the pleasures of the most canonical examples of literary parody, including celebrated works by authors such as Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, and Max Beerbohm. It introduces models and concepts that are relevant to the study of modernist texts, exploring how parody has been conceptualized by practising authors and critics as well as by theorists invested in Russian formalism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism, notably Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Fredric Jameson, Malcolm Bradbury, Linda Hutcheon, and Ihab Hassan. It pays close attention to the distinctions they make between parody and related modes, such as pastiche, burlesque, travesty, stylization, metafiction, and/or intertextuality. In doing so, it shows the remarkable breadth of parody’s remit and scope, as well as its innermost workings. The history it delineates reveals the fluctuating reputation of parody over time, explaining why parody in modernism has been largely overlooked. The chapter concludes with a literature survey that focuses particularly on parody in the works of James Joyce, one of the few modernist writers whose use of parody is well recognized.