Parody is part of all our lives. It occurs not only in literature, but also in everyday speech, in theatre and television, architecture and films. Drawing on examples from Aristophanes to The Simpsons, Simon Dentith explores:
* the place of parody in the history of literature
* parody as a subversive or conservative mode of writing
* parody's pivotal role in debates about postmodernism
* parody in the culture wars from ancient times to the present
This lively introduction situates parody at the heart of literary and cultural studies and offers a remarkably clear guide...

Envisioning today s readers as poised between an impossible attempt to read texts as their original readers experienced them and an awareness of our own temporal moment, Simon Dentith complicates traditional prejudices against hindsight to approach issues of interpretation and historicity in nineteenth-century literature. Suggesting that the characteristic aesthetic attitude encouraged by the backward look is one of irony rather than remorse or regret, he examines works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, William Morris and John Ruskin in terms of their participation in...