ROSE, Margaret. Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-Modern.

Nova Iorque:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.

2. Distinguishing parody from related forms

Satire (p. 80)

parody has often been used for what has been described as satiric purposes (p. 80)
[note 89]

89: contrary to Linda Hutcheons 1985 [A theory of parody] account of my

Parody//Meta-fiction of 1979, it also distinguished parody from satire

As will be seen presentely from the case of Menippean satire 1, the two aspects of satire
of medley and ridicule have been associated with forms that have since been called
satire, however, from at least the time of Menippus, in the mid-third century BC (p. 81)

Despite the fact that some parody may appear to treat its target in a manner similar to
satire in making it the object of laughter, one major factor which distinguishes the
parody of the satire is, as already noted, the parodys use of the preformed material as its
target as a constituent part of its own structure. Satire, on the other hand, need not to
be restricted to the imitation, distortion, or quotation of other literary texts of preformed
artistic materials, and when it does deal with such performed material, need not to make
itself as dependent upon it for its own character as does parody, but may simply make
fun of it as a target external to itself (p. 81-82)

In refunctioning the performed language material of other texts and discourses literary
parody has often created allusions to another author, another reader, and their norms,
as well as to the relationship between the text, or discourse, and its social context. While
literary parody may be distinguished from other forms of satire as a form dealing with
the refunctioning of a preformed literary and linguistic material, such distinction should
not imply that literary parody is therefore only concerned with literary norms (p. 82)

In so far as it is not a simples imitation but a distortion of the original the method of
parody is to disrealize the norms which the original tries to realize, that is to say, to
reduce what is of normative status in the original to a convention or a mere device
(Shlonsky, Tuvia, Literary Parody. Remarks on its Method and Function, in
Proceedings of the 4th Congress of the International Comparative Literature
Association, 1964, edited by Franois Jost, 2 vols., vol. 2 (The Hague, 1966), pp. 797-
801; p. 797 apud Rose, 1993, p. 82-83)

Moreover, since it aims the sharpening readers awareness of the literary medium,
parody employs the devices of its original while laying them bare2, to use the term
coined by the Russian Formalists. In general the parodic method is the extension, in
various directions and to various degrees, of the device of laying bare the device. In its

1 See Bakhtin, M. Problemas da Potica de Dostivski (Cap. 4)

2 Lay bare: to make something obvious that was not known before
attempt to expose that illusion which it originally tries to conceal, parody has a close
affinity with irony (idem, apud Rose, 1993, p. 83)

It can be said ([to distinguish both parody and satire] that such parody works by
juxtaposition, omission, addition, condensation and by discontinuance of the original
structure and/or content of the literary or artistic context which it quotes, imitates, or
alludes to in order comically to refunction it, and that it is hence to at least some extent
ambivalently constructed from the target which it refunctions (p. 83)

parody may be used to by the satirist to attack an author or reader through the
evocation and mockery of a particular work with which they may be associated, and that
the parody may sometimes have the satiric aim of using a target text or other preformed
work to attack its author or audience (p. 86)

Irony (p. 87)

Both can conceal its [Rose sais the authors] intended meaning from immediate
interpretation (p. 87)

Rose goes on describing the polyphonic characteristics of the ironic statement, better
developed by O. Ducrot.

In the parody the complex function of the dual meaning of the irony is matched by that
of the dual text or code when the parodied text is used as a word-mask or decoy-code
to conceal or complicate the message of the parodist. (X appears to be saying Y but is in
fact saying something different) (p. 87)

Irony, alone, however, is usually more cryptic than most parody, which though
ambiguously containing a mixture of messages usually also contains at least two
distinct codes with two distinct sets of messages from more than the one author, in
contrast to the combination of messages in the single coded of the ironist (p. 88)

Whereas, moreover, the difference between the apparent message of the ironists code
and its real message is generally left concealed for the recipient of the irony to
decipher, the parodist combines and then comically (and, thus, noticeably) contrasts a
quoted text or work with a new context [] with the aim of producing laughter from
the recognition of their incongruity (p. 88)

Parody can nonetheless be distinguished from irony and satire proper by virtue of
several of its defining characteristics, and all of these three forms shown as differing in
some essential parts (p. 88-89)

parody not only contains at least two codes, but is potentially both ironic and satiric in
that the object of its attack is both made a part of the irony and of it potentially ironic
multiple messages and may be more specifically defined as a separated target the object
of the irony (p. 89)

Schema to represent Irony, Parody and Satire (p. 89)

Part II Modern Parody

3. Modern and late-modern theories and uses of parody (p. 101)

M. M. Bakhtin (p. 125)

of his concept of parody as both double-voiced form and one which is based on
contrast and dissonance (p. 126)3

All this phenomena [stylization, skaz, and dialogue], despite very real differences
among them, share one common trait: discourse in them has a twofold direction it is
directed both toward the referential object of speech, as in ordinary discourse, and
toward anothers discourse, toward someone elses speech (p. 126)

This is not unlike Tynyanovs distinction between stylization and parody which he
makes on the basis of the consonance and dissonance between their dual planes.
Bakhtins discussion of this subject differs from Tynyanovs, however, in not only
stressing the hostility of the clash of voices in the parody, but in failing to mention the
comic colouring of the parody which Tynyanov had explicitly separated from the
parody in his 1921 text but had not eliminated altogether from its description (p. 127)

Bakhtin then points to the different types of parody which may exist, but without
revising their previously defined basis (p. 128)

his stress on the hostility between the voices present in the parody is indicative of the
fact that he like some Russian formalists had continued to view it in the modern
manner as a largely destructive device (p. 130)

Structuralists and post-structuralists (p. 177)

Kristeva has suggested that the interpretation of the word canivalistic as connoting a
comic parody has mystified the more tragic and revolutionary aspects of the carnival
which she claims Bakhtin have stressed. Despite the fact that Bakhtin had also used the
word parody when discussing the more revolutionary functions of carnival, and had
emphasised the importance of laughter in both, Kristeva4 continues: the laughter of the
carnival is not simply parodic; it is not more comic than tragic, it is the two at the same
time, it is, if one will serious, and only in this way is its stage neither that of the law
nor of the parody, but of its other (p. 179)

Kristevas reference to the laughter of the carnival being both comic and tragic is also
made at the same time as she separates parody from the carnival and its serious aspects

3 Againd on problmes of Dostoievski poetics

4 Ver Le mot, le dialogue, le romain(1966)
on the apparent, and modern, assumption that parody is only largely comic, and its
comedy cannot also be serious (p. 179)

several other late-modern commentators on parodic intertextuality have reduced

parody to the intertextual by denying or overlooking the comic aspects of parody (p.
180)

Todorov does the same sterilizes parody

4. Contemporary late-modern and post-modern theories and uses of parody