The Genius Of Parody

Recent theoretical approaches have compelled critics to rethink many received notions regarding the significance of contemporary parodic activity. This study places parody firmly (if paradoxically) where it belongs: at the centre of the literary-creative process in the literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries.

Parodies have been created throughout times and cultures. A glimpse at the general judicial latitude generally afforded to parodies, satires, caricatures, and pastiches demonstrates the social and cultural value of this particular form of artistic expression. With the advent of technologies and the evolution of copyright legislation, creative endeavours in the form of parody gathered a new youth but became unlawful. While copyright law grants exclusive rights to right-holders, this right is not absolute. Legislation includes specific exceptions, which preclude right-holders from exercising their prerogatives in particular cases which foster creativity and cultural diversity within that society. The parody exception pertains to this ultimate objective by permitting users to reproduce copyright-protected materials for the purpose of parody. To understand the meaning and scope of the parody exception, this book examines and compares five jurisdictions which differ in their protection of parodies: France, Australia, Canada, the US and the United Kingdom. This book is concerned with finding an appropriate balance between the protection awarded to right-holders and the public interest. This is achieved by analysing the parody exception to the economic rights of right-holders, the preservation of moral rights and the interaction of the parody exception with contract law. As parodies constitute an artistic expression protected under the right to freedom of expression, this book also considers the influence of freedom of expression on the interpretation of this specific copyright exception. Furthermore, this book aims at providing guidance on how to resolve conflicts where fundamental rights are in conflict. This is the first book in English to offer an in-depth investigation into the parody exception in copyright law, and comments on industry practices linked to this form of creative endeavours.

This book brings together an analysis of the theoretical connection of genre, reception, and frame theory and a practical demonstration thereof, using a set of parodies of the first wave of the Gothic novel, ranging from well-known titles such as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, to little known and researched titles such as Mary Charlton’s Rosella. Münderlein traces the development of socio-political debates conducted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries on female roles, behaviour, and subversion from the subtly subversive Gothic novel to the Gothic parody. Combining two major areas of research, literary criticism and Gothic studies, the book provides both a new take on an ongoing debate in literary criticism as well as an in-depth study of a virtually neglected aspect of Gothic studies, the Gothic parody.

Parody was a crucial technique for the satirists and novelists associated with the Scriblerus Club. The great eighteenth-century wits (Alexander Pope, John Gay, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne) often explored the limits of the ugly, the droll, the grotesque and the insane by mocking, distorting and deconstructing multiple discourses, genres, modes and methods of representation. This book traces the continuity and difference in parodic textuality from Pope to Sterne. It focuses on polyphony, intertextuality and deconstruction in parodic genres and examines the uses of parody in such texts as «The Beggar’s Opera», «The Dunciad», «Joseph Andrews» and «Tristram Shandy». The book demonstrates how parody helped the modern novel to emerge as a critical and artistically self-conscious form.

Eighteenth century Britain thought of itself as a polite, sentimental, enlightened place, but often its literature belied this self-image. This was an age of satire, and the century's novels, poems, plays, and prints resound with mockery and laughter, with cruelty and wit. The street-level invective of Grub Street pamphleteers is full of satire, and the same accents of raillery echo through the high scepticism of the period's philosophers and poets, many of whom were part-time pamphleteers themselves. The novel, a genre that emerged during the eighteenth century, was from the beginning shot through with satirical colours borrowed from popular romances and scandal sheets. This Handbook is a guide to the different kinds of satire written in English during the 'long' eighteenth century. It focuses on texts that appeared between the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Outlier chapters extend the story back to first decade of the seventeenth century, and forward to the second decade of the nineteenth. The scope of the volume is not confined by genre, however. So prevalent was the satirical mode in writing of the age that this book serves as a broad and characteristic survey of its literature. The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire reflects developments in historical criticism of eighteenth-century writing over the last two decades, and provides a forum in which the widening diversity of literary, intellectual, and socio-historical approaches to the period's texts can come together.

Parody is a most iridescent phenomenon: of ancient Greek origin, parody's very malleability has allowed it to survive and to conquer Western cultures. Changing discourse on parody, its complex relationship with related humorous forms (e.g. travesty, burlesque, satire), its ability to cross genre boundaries, the many parodies handed down by tradition, and its ubiquity in contemporary culture all testify to its multifaceted nature. No wonder that 'parody' has become a phrase without clear meaning. The essays in this collection reflect the multidimensionality of recent parody studies. They pay tribute to its long and varied tradition, covering examples of parodic practice from the Middle Ages to the present day and dealing with English, American, postcolonial, Austrian, and German parodies. The papers range from the Medieval classics (e.g. Chaucer), parodies of Shakespeare, and the role of parody in German Romanticism, to parodies of fin-de-si�cle literature and the intertextual puzzles of the late twentieth century (such as cross-dressing, Schwab's Faustparody, and Rushdie's Satanic Verses). And they have transformed the contentious nature of parody into a diverse range of methodologies. In doing so, these essays offer a survey of the current state of parody studies.

This engaging study explores how the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and others were taken up by caricaturists as a means of helping the eighteenth-century British public make sense of political issues, outrages, and personalities. The first in-depth exploration of the relationship between literature and visual satire in this period, David Taylor’s book explores how great texts, seen through the lens of visual parody, shape how we understand the political world. It offers a fascinating, novel approach to literary history.

An exploration of parody in Swift's early prose, and in textual and cultural developments in Swift's Britain.