A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms

by Linda Hutcheon

In this major study of a flexible and multifaceted mode of expression, Linda Hutcheon looks at works of modern literature, visual art, music, film, theater, and architecture to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of what parody is and what it does.
Hutcheon identifies parody as one of the major forms of modern self-reflexivity, one that marks the intersection of invention and critique and offers an important mode of coming to terms with the texts and discourses of the past. Looking at works as diverse as Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill , Woody Allen's Zelig , Karlheinz Stockhausen's Hymnen , James Joyce's Ulysses , and Magritte's This Is Not a Pipe , Hutcheon discusses the remarkable range of intent in modern parody while distinguishing it from pastiche, burlesque, travesty, and satire. She shows how parody, through ironic playing with multiple conventions, combines creative expression with critical commentary. Its productive-creative approach to tradition results in a modern recoding that establishes difference at the heart of similarity.
In a new introduction, Hutcheon discusses why parody continues to fascinate her and why it is commonly viewed as suspect-–for being either too ideologically shifty or too much of a threat to the ownership of intellectual and creative property.
 

Genres: Theory, Nonfiction, Art, Academic, Literary Criticism

168 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1985

Reviews

[meeners · Rating 4 out of 5]

if i were to categorize this book using the list found in italo calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler (an apt reference, i think, considering that book's many parodies of genre and narrative form), i think it'd put it somewhere between "Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too" and "Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them." i came across hutcheon's famous definition of parody ("repetition with ironic critical distance") so many times that i eventually found myself self-importantly rattling off the definition whenever the subject came up. "yeah, hutcheon, of course! repetition with ironic difference! duh!" then i would either change the subject ("so how about that foucault!") or distract the speaker with something else entirely ("time for a beer!"). <---preferred method of evasion for all possible situations

anyhow, it's definitely worth your time to go through the whole book, especially if you want to tackle the different nuances of parody/satire/irony/pastiche. also worth your time if you want to make yourself feel bad about being too stupid to pick up parodic allusions. =P example: DID YOU KNOW that umberto eco's the name of the rose is on one level a parody of "the hound of the baskervilles"?! my 17-year-old self apparently did not. (all i remember about my impressions of the book, frankly, is that i thought the labyrinth library was really, really cool.) now i want to reread the name of the rose, though i rather suspect it will just end up being relegated to the category of "Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also [Re-]Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered."

next up: irony!

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eu adoro paródias. Quando eu era pequeno eu gostava de assistir a um programa chamado "Concurso de Paródias", que trazia versões cheias de humor de músicas brasileiras. Eu percebia que ali estava uma maneira de fazer uma crítica àquelas músicas, mas manentendo a estrutura das rimas e da composição musical. Linda Hutcheon em seu livro Uma Teoria da Paródia, analisa essa ferramenta linguística que tanto apropria como subverte um texto cultural. Ela afirma que a paródia é uma repetição com distanciamento crítico, mas levanta também a questão de que a paródia é ao mesmo tempo uma ruptura com a continuidade como uma manutenção de uma estrutura. O que precisa ser analisado é, então, os vieses ideológicos com que essa repetição, apropriação, subversão, enfim, tradução dos textos culturais são utilizados. Isso reflete na análise que estou fazendo na minha tese, que envolve a utilização de paródias de super-heróis. No final das contas é o viés ideológico que vai garantir o sentido que se quer passar, crítico ou conservador, do uso da ferramenta da paródia e a tradução que ela define do texto original.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is more of a formalist work than I'm used to dealing with, but it was very useful in terms of my thinking about parody. The book focuses exclusively on artistic (in the broadest sense) parody, so I'm going to have to translate Hutcheon's theores to parodic performance for most of my thesis (though as a modern novel there are probably parodic elements in Valencia that I may end up dealing with).

Both my friend and I (he read one of Hutcheon's other books) agreed that her style is interesting, but for some reason she takes a long time to read. I think this book went smoother than the one he read, because there is already a body of work dealing with parody against which Hutcheon built her definition, whereas adaptation (the subject of the book he read) is a much less defined topic.

[Ruby · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
(how to rate a book that achieves exactly what it sets out to do (and thus gives you what you were looking for) but that is nevertheless not particularly exciting? simply solid.)

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great analysis of a central aspect of modern and postmodern art, music, and literature.

[Debbie Gascoyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels kind of silly putting a rating on this, but it's one theoretical text that I actually quite enjoyed reading. Reading it for my diss, and it provided a sensible overview and and some criteria that will be very helpful as I prepare to write my "parody" chapter. Hutcheon is a very cogent writer, with the humility to present multiple alternate points of view without either slamming them or following them slavishly.

[Mia Varinia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como siempre me pasa con los textos que me sugieren de la U, lo encontré extremadamente rebuscado para explicar las diferencias entre ironía, sátira y parodia. Creo que no es necesario darse una vuelta innecesaria para explicar por qué las dos primeras son en tono despectivo y la última va enfocada en "homenajear" otro texto/título/autor.

En fin, es interesante pero agotador

[bea ☭]

mereço o prémio nobel da paz por ter lido isto sem rebentar os cornos contra a parede

[ola k · Rating 4 out of 5]

bingo (my seminar edition): don kichot-mentioned, dostoevsky-mentioned, bachtin-mentioned, gogol-mentioned, nabokov-mentioned

[Bella]

I’ve been seriously slacking with reading. Too many articles and chapters. Adding in the books I’ve read for school now though. They still count! For now. Time for fun books again

[Bob McCauley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got up to page 168 and lost interest. I will return to it. I don't agree with all the views of the author but the art she exposed the reader to and the connections there-in are important.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful volume written partly in reaction to the idea that theory determines what one says about literature. Hutcheon's revisiting of the genre of parody begins in observations about its operation in a host of modern disciplines: literature, art, music, film and architecture. She only moves to theorizing once she has established basic parameters of the genre under discussion. A lot of the book feels as if it is fighting a rear (or front?) guard action against theory. Hutcheon's chief achievement here is to promote a definition of parody derived in part from a neglected part of the term's etymology from Greek. This definition allows Hutcheon to show not only where parody is normative and builds in common with satire, but, crucially, where it can be revolutionary in diverging from satire. The move to distinguish parody from satire is the volume's best argument and naturally Hutcheon takes a fair amount of time over it. It is this distinction that permits Hutcheon to show that not all parody seeks to tear down the previous models it uses; sometimes it revitalizes those previous models without attacking or discarding them. A mostly readable volume, despite the time spent worrying over modern theoretical quibbles.

[Sandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though she spends quite a bit of time in her introduction and conclusion justifying her theoretical situation (not formalist, not decon, not reader response, not anything), and ends up with a product that, I think, has a lot to do with formalism anyway, this is a very useful book that explains a clear definition of parody: repetition with critical, ironic distance. This expands the definition of parody out of just the comic, and Hutcheon gives many examples from the visual arts, film, classic literature, and many (especially) modernist works. Hutcheon also tackles satire, irony, and pastiche in defining how parody is a different concept.