Parody

“ Are we on the way to a parody which shall have no other excuse than the reckless search after fodder for degraded appetites—after the pay to be earned by pasturing Circe's herd where they may defile every monument of that growing life which should have kept them human?
The world seems to me well supplied with what is genuinely ridiculous: wit and humour may play as harmlessly or beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows. ”

“ Her soul had been so utterly surprised and terrified in the outer world that this infantile parody was curiously welcome, since nothing keeps the mind in balance on the tight-rope of sanity like the counterweight that comedy furnishes to tragedy, farce to frenzy, and puerility to solemnity. ”

“ They do not merely make one smile, and then regret that one has smiled from the sense of emptiness which follows; they make one almost think that the parody must have been written by the poet parodied in a moment of amused self-ridicule.... ”

“ A perfect conception expressing itself inevitably in the form that has grown with its growth defies imitators. The great things of Virgil and of Dante suffer no parody. And this is what is meant by a classic.
Yet lesser books have their day; and young authors, or old authors trying a new kind of work, often begin by imitation. They discover their genius by their failure. The famous parodies (so to call them) are not parodies at all; their freedom from the servility of parody is what has given them their place in literature. ”

“ Frequently an intentional parody of the serious part is not to be mistaken in them; at other times the connexion is more arbitrary and loose, and the more so the more marvellous the invention of the whole, and the more entirely it is become a light revelling of the fancy. The comic intervals everywhere serve to prevent the pastime from being converted into a business, to preserve the mind in the possession of its serenity, and to keep off that gloomy and inert seriousness which so easily steals upon the sentimental, but not tragical, drama. ”

“ It is much easier to fathom the comic effect of caricature than that of simple imitation. Caricature, parody and travesty, like their practical counterpart—unmasking, range themselves against persons and objects who command authority and respect and who are exalted in some sense—these are procedures tending towards degradation. ”

“ Hitherto the verse groans and labors with its load, and goes not forward blithely, singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. ”

“ That eternal and fatal law by which the grotesque is linked with the sublime—by which the laugh re-echoes the groan, parody rides behind despair, and seeming is opposed to being—had never found more terrible expression. Never had a light more sinister illumined the depths of human darkness. ”

“ Where the creative imagination never ceases to be simple and naïve, where it never distorts itself by the affected or the unnatural, there is the consecrated land of poetry, in which there is no place for the parodist. On the other hand, where there is a palpable want of simplicity and nature, parody is perfectly conceivable ”

“ A profane parody is recited, or a libel on an absent member—and songs are sung in mockery of their former friends and employers. From foul words they get to blows and broken heads; till, drunk with ribaldry, and stunned with noise, they proceed to throw open the windows and abuse the passengers in the street, for their want of religion, morals, and decorum! ”

“ Matthew Arnold in 1882, "is a vile art, but I must say I read Poor Matthias in the World with an amused pleasure." It was a generous appreciation, for the original Poor Matthias—an elegy on a canary— is an exquisite poem, and the World's parody of it is a rather dull imitation. On the whole, I agree with Mr. Arnold that parody is a vile art; but the dictum is a little too sweeping. A parody of anything really good, whether in prose or verse, is as odious as a burlesque of Hamlet; but, on the other hand, parody is the appropriate punishment for certain kinds of literary affectation. ”

“ Yet for those former, the many, and the working, and the powerful, all we seem to be inclined to do is to parody Scripture, and say: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.” ”

“ Another form of parody is the parody of style, when, instead of selecting a particular poem to paraphrase, we imitate, in verse modelled on the form he usually adopts, the mannerisms of thought or expression for which any particular writer is distinguished. ”

“ What puts this argument in as striking a point of view as any thing, is the nature of parody or burlesque, the secret of which lies merely in transposing or applying at a venture to any thing, or to the lowest objects, that which is applicable only to certain given things, or to the highest matters. ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is but one step.’ The slightest want of unity of 24impression destroys the sublime; the detection of the smallest incongruity is an infallible ground to rest the ludicrous upon. ”

“ Dropping for the most part personal allusions, caricature, ridicule, and parody, which, in a more general form than in the old comedy, had maintained their ground in the middle comedy, the poets of the new comedy made it their business to reproduce in a generalized form a picture of the every-day life of those by whom they were surrounded. ”

“ In order that a parody or burlesque may be successful, it is necessary that the production ridiculed, should have acquired a certain degree of celebrity, and however well received by the court, before which it was at first chiefly performed, this drama of our author may have been, some time must have elapsed ere it could have acquired a sufficient degree of notoriety for the purpose of successful satire. ”

“ This parody, the best of all the numerous parodies, may be taken as an example not only of the author’s wit but of his debonnaire courage, for it was written immediately after our joint failure which at the moment was a bitter thought for both of us. There is indeed nothing more miserable than a theatrical failure, for you feel how many others who have backed you have been affected by it. It was, I am glad to say, my only experience of it, and I have no doubt that Barrie could say the same. ”

“ This valet serves chiefly to parody the ideal motives from which his master acts, and this he frequently does with much wit and grace. Seldom is he with his artifices employed as an efficient lever in establishing the intrigue, in which we rather admire the wit of accident than of contrivance. Other pieces are called Comedias de figuron; all the figures, with one exception, are usually the same as those in the former class, and this one is always drawn in caricature, and occupies a prominent place in the composition. ”

“ The paragraphers joke about the wheel-barrow, the hen, the mule, the mother-in-law, the President of the United States. There is no ascending or descending scale of importance. Any of the topics can raise a laugh. If one examines a collection of American parodies, one will find that the happy national talent for fun-making finds full scope in the parody [Pg 204] and burlesque of the dearest national sentiments. But no one minds; everybody believes that the sentiments endure while the jokes will pass. The jokes, intended as they are for an immense audience, necessarily lack subtlety. ”

“ A convincing parody is the best possible danger signal to inform a poet that he is writing sequels, repeating his conjuring tricks until they can be seen through and ridiculously imitated. “That awkward fellow Ariphrades,” much as we dislike him, is one of the most useful members of our republic of letters.
XLIX
CROSS RHYTHM AND RESOLUTION I HAVE already attempted to show Poetry as the Recorder’s précis of a warm debate between the members of the poet’s mental Senate on some unusually contraversial subject. ”

“ I have increased the remoteness from real life—which was sometimes appreciable in the original—to such an extent that it should be impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is intended for anybody in real life. ”

“ But this idea does not exhaust the essential character of Comedy; for parody always supposes a reference to the subject which is parodied, and a necessary dependence on it. The Old Comedy, however, as a species of poetry, is as independent and original as Tragedy itself; it stands on the same elevation with it, that is, it extends just as far beyond the limits of reality into the domains of free creative fancy.
Tragedy is the highest earnestness of poetry; Comedy altogether sportive. ”

“ It is a sign of intellectual barrenness in the writers; for what is easier than parody? what means of raising a laugh so certain and so cheap as to roll a statue from its pedestal and stick some vulgar utensil in its place? Laughter always follows the incongruous ”

“ The explanation is that the cleverest men are content to produce either parody or what is narrowly topical, and both of these are usually born in their graves. “Parody,” said a don, “is always with us, and nearly always against us.” Parody and its companions are, in fact, a sort of unofficial bull-dogs, that persecute all forms of bad, and even good, behaviour which do not come within the proctor’s jurisdiction. The proctor is a favourite victim. “O vestment of velvet and virtue,” runs an obvious parody in the Shotover Papers of 1874, by “Gamble Gold,” ”

“ Then he was Man, and a Positivist.” “and ‘Skymaking’ is another oft quoted bit. I thought, perhaps, that you had written parodies on these; though it seemed unlikely, because satiric verse does not lend itself to parody. I am always interested in anything connected with my husband’s works, because I truly believe in his genius. ”

“ The things that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of mediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever understood. ”

“ Prose parodies, excepting those in Rejected Addresses, have been excluded; the derivation of the word 'parody' may be referred to in justification. Emerson wrote in his 'Fable'
'——all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year
And a sphere; so in this volume will be found all forms of imitations from, in Mr. Owen Seaman's words, 'the lowest, a mere verbal echo, to the highest, where it becomes a department of pure criticism.'
It is quite unnecessary to add to the published mass of writing, wise and foolish, on the art and ethics of parody. ”

“ In a note to the same review, when reprinted in the collected edition of his essays, he remarks of these Addresses that “some few of them descend to the level of parodies, but by far the greater part are of a much higher description;” from which it would seem that he draws a distinction between a parody and something “of a much higher description,” which we must confess to being a little in the dark about, unless it be an imitation, and that we should be disposed to rank very much below a good parody. Many of our minor bards, for example, have produced extraordinarily close imitations of Mr. ”

“ The discovery that it is in our power to make another person comical opens the way to unsuspected gains in comic pleasure, and forms the foundation of a highly developed technique. It is also possible to make one’s self just as comical as others. The means which serve to make a person comical are transference into comic situations, imitations, disguise, unmasking, caricature, parody travesty, and the like. ”

“ With regard to what we have described as the second feature of Middle Comedy, it may perhaps just be remarked that this constant habit of parodying and ridiculing love-stories would inevitably tend, in some sort, to bring the whole matter of love into contempt. ”

“ After these, Browning, Swinburne, and Walt Whitman; then Moore, Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Thomas Campbell.
Of single poems the one showing the greatest number of parodies is “My Mother," by Ann Taylor; after this those most used for the purpose have been “The Raven," Gray's “Elegy," “The Song of the Shirt," “The May Queen," “Locksley [xxx] Hall," “The Burial of Sir John Moore," and Kingsley's “Three Fishers."
Parody, then, is a tribute to popularity, and consequently to merit of one sort or another, and in the hands of the initiate may be considered a touch-stone that proves true worth. ”

“ Austin Dobson.
[Pg 281]
[Pg 282]
Burlesques, Pasquinades, etc., in Ballade, Chant Royal, Rondeau, and Villanelle forms.
If an apology seem needful for the presence of this section, this quotation will explain why it was included:-
"We maintain that far from converting virtue into a paradox, and degrading truth by ridicule, Parody will only strike at what is chimerical and false ”

“ This is indeed a common trick with remarkers, which they either practise by precedent from their master Zoilus, or are beholden for it to the same turn of temper. We acknowledge it a fine piece of satire, when there is folly in a passage, to lay it open in the way by which it naturally requires to be exposed: do this handsomely, and the author is deservedly a jest. If, on the contrary, you dress a passage which was not originally foolish, in the highest humour of ridicule, you only frame something which the author himself might laugh at, without being more nearly concerned than another reader. ”

“ But if vice, divested of disgust and terror, is thus in its own nature ridiculous, we ought not to be surprized if the very same vices which spread horror and desolation thro' the Tragic scene should yet furnish the Comic with its highest laughter and delight, and that tears, and mirth, and even humour and wit itself, should grow from the same root of incongruity: For what is humour in the humourist, but incongruity, whether of sentiment, conduct, or manners? What in the man of humour, but a quick discernment and keen sensibility of these incongruities? ”