The Oxford Book of Parodies

by Gross, John

• ISBN13: 9780199639373
• ISBN10: 019963937X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Parodies come in all shapes and sizes. There are broad parodies and subtle parodies, ingenious imitations and knockabout spoofs, scornful lampoons and affectionate pastiches. All these varieties, and many others, appear in this delightful anthology, which has been hailed as "delightful" ( Wall Street Journal), "enjoyable" ( The New Yorker), and "sparkling" ( The Financial Times). The classics of the genre are all here, but so are scores of lesser known but scarcely less brilliant works. At every stage there are surprises. Proust visits Chelsea, Yeats re-writes "Old King Cole," Harry Potter encounters Mick Jagger, a modernized Sermon on the Mount rubs shoulders with an obituary of Sherlock Holmes. The collection provides a hilarious running commentary on literary history, but it also looks beyond literature to include such things as ad parodies, political parodies, and even a scientific hoax. The collection includes work by such accomplished parodists as Max Beerbohm, Robert Benchley, H. L. Mencken, and Evelyn Waugh. And the "victims" include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Poe, Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Cole Porter, Martin Amis, and many others.

Author Biography

John Gross was a major editor and critic who worked for the TLS, the New York Times, and the Sunday Telegraph during his illustrious career.

Table of Contents

Part One
Parodies of individual authors by parodists including: Max Beerbohm, Robert Benchley, Alan Bennett, Irving Berlin, John Betjeman,Bret Harte, Anthony Hecht, Clive James, H. L. Mencken, George Orwell, James Thurber, John Updike, Peter Ustinov, Evelyn Waugh
Parodied authors include: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, Longfellow, Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Hardy, Wilde, Conan Doyle, Yeats, Woolf, A. A. Milne, Lawrence, Marianne Moore, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Cole Porter, e. e. cummings, Hemingway, Auden, Larkin, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Heaney, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, J. K. Rowling
Part Two
From the Wider World [foreign authors]
Nursery Rhymes
Tories and Radicals
The Young Jane Austen
Ripostes
Alice [Lewis Carroll]
James Joyce as Parodist
Composites
Stage and Screen
Artistic Endeavours
The Written Word
Draynfleete
Affairs of State
The Sokal Hoax
Two Tributes
A Mixed Assembly