Entertainment / Literature / Parody: Beside, subsidiary, or mock song): A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work, much as a caricaturist creates a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying and calling attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term parody is often used synonymously with the more general term spoof, which makes fun of the general traits of a genre rather than one particular work or author. Often the subject-matter of a parody is comically inappropriate, such as using the elaborate, formal diction of an epic to describe something trivial like washing socks or cleaning a dusty attic. Aristotle attributes the first Greek parody to Hegemon of Thasos in The Poetics, though other writings credit the playwright Hipponax with the first creation of theatrical parody. Aristophanes makes use of parody in The Frogs (in which he mocks the style of Euripides and Aeschylus). Plato also caricatures the style of various writers in the Symposium. In the Middle Ages, the first well-known English parody is Chaucer's 'Sir Thopas,' and Chaucer is himself the basis of parodies written by Alexander Pope and W. W. Skeat. Cervantes creates a parody of medieval romance in Don Quixote. Rabelais creates parodies of similar material in Gargantua and Pantagruel. Erasmus parodies medieval scholastic writings in Moriae Encomium. In Shamela (1741), Henry Fielding makes a parody of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela by turning the virtuous serving girl into a spirited and sexually ambitious character who merely uses coyness and false chasteness as a tool for snagging a husband. In Joseph Andews (1742), Henry Fielding again parodies Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, this time by replacing Richardson's sexually beleaguered heroine, Pamela, with a hearty male hero who must defend his virtue from the sexually voracious Lady Booby. In the Romantic period, Southey, Wordsworth, Browning, and Swinburne were the victims of far too many parodies in far too many works to list here. See also mock epic, satire, and spoof. (Greek
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Parody Noun Synonyms: burlesque, lampoon, satirize, caricature, mock, mimic, ape, ridicule, deride, laugh at, poke fun at, guy, scoff at, sneer at, rib, tease, twit, roast, pillory, make a laughing-stock (of), make sport of, make fun of, make a monkey (out) of, fleer
Parody Adjective Synonyms: burlesque, lampoon, satire, caricature, mockery, mimicry, take-off, spoof, send-up
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Entertainment / Music / Cakewalk: Syncopated, strutting dance of nineteenth century origin: developed among Southern slaves in a parody of white plantation owners. MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Self-Reflexivity: Writing has self-reflexivity if it somehow refers to itself. (Critics also call this being self-referential.) For instance, the following sentence has self-reflexive traits: This is not a sentence. He MORE