Parody is a comic imitation of a literary work. A writer creates a parody to ridicule another work by exaggerating its author’s style or ideas. Parody is in literature what a cartoon is in art.
Parodists usually choose famous writers who have a distinctive style, so that the reader can easily recognize the subject of the parody. For example, the American authors Ernest Hemingway and Henry James have often been parodied. Parodists exaggerate Hemingway’s crisp style and James’s complicated sentences.
Expert parodists thoroughly know the subject they are parodying. A successful parody demonstrates not only the understanding of the original author but also the parodist’s own skill. Although parody involves criticism, it is also a kind of appreciation. By selecting a certain author, the parodist acknowledges that the subject is both original and well known.
Many early English novelists began their careers as parodists, including Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Perhaps the leading American parodist of the mid-1900’s was Peter De Vries. Almost all his novels have passages in which he parodies the work of others.
