The Genius of Parody: Imitation and Originality in Seventeenth- And Eighteenth-Century English Literature

ISBN-13: 9780230008564 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 285 str.

Robert Mack

Opis

The stigmatisation of parody as "the worst enemy" of creativity has been pervasive in our literary culture. Although recent theoretical approaches have compelled critics to rethink many received notions regarding the significance of contemporary parodic activity, the perception remains that parody existed only on the disreputable margins of earlier literary cultures. This study places parody firmly (if paradoxically) where it belongs: at the centre of the literary-creative process in much of the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Recenzje

'Robert L. Mack's The Genius of Parody makes an exciting contribution to the literary history of the Early Modern period and the eighteenth century. Mack provocatively asserts the centrality of parody in the writing of the period, and traces its operations in literature both familiar and unfamiliar. This is a stimulating, wide-ranging and ambitious book, written in a thoroughly engaging way that manages to combine an impressive range of scholarship with a lively manner of writing.' - Professor Simon Dentith, University of Gloucestershire, UK

Spis treści

Introduction 'We Cannot Think of What Hath Not Been Thought': or, How Critics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Literary Parody Parody as Plague: Ben Jonson and the Early Anxieties of Parodic Destabilization Minding True Things by Mock'ries: The Henry V Chorus and the Question of Shakespearean Parody John Dryden and Homeopathic Parody in the Early Augustan Battleground Parodying Pope's Eloisa to Abelard : Richard Owen Cambridge's An Elegy Written in an Empty Assembly Room Parody, Autobiography and the Novel: Charlotte Charke's The History of Mr. Henry Dumont, Esq., and Miss Charlotte Evelyn Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

O autorze

ROBERT L. MACK is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Exeter, UK. He is the author of Thomas Gray: A Life, published in 2000.