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54 P AR OD Y I N T HE A N CI EN T A ND M ED IE vA L W OR LD S

ings are in pan dependent on the panicular comexts in which

they occur. Thus, juSt as it is a mistake co seek co give a general

cultural or political meaning ro parody, so is ir ro atrempr ro do

so CO rhe liturgical and biblical parodies of rhe medieval world,

ourside of the panicular rituals and occasions when rhey were

pracrised. As wirh our fragmentary knowledge of ancienr Greek

culture, ir is nor possible fully co reconstrucr rhese panicular

occasions, rhough we can surely recognise rhat rhe debunking

power of parody would have varied enormously in differing cir-cumstances.

A more general conclusion can, however, be reached wirh

respecr co parody's relarionship ro the sacred or aurhorirarive texts

in borh medieval and ancienr culrure. Ir is rhe case rhar rhe seri-

ous genres were accompanied by rhe serio-comic ones rhroughout

Greek anriguity, and the sacred scories were accompanied by

mock versions rhroughour rheir transmission. Similarly, rhough

co a much lesser exrenr, rhe sacred rexrs and rituals of medieval

Chrisrendom provoked parodic accompanimenrs, which perhaps

became more prominenr in rhe larer medieval period. 1n g~.IJ~ral

rerms, we can say thar sacred and aurhorirarive texrs'iii~;riablygather around them such parodic accompanimenrs. The exte'nr of

this (and the damag~ permirred co do) depends upon social

and even political facrors which mayor may nor include popular

institutions like the carnival. Bur we cannor speak of a single

unidirecrional hiscorical progression. Rarher, we need CO rhink of

rhe sacred and the parodic moving in a kind of flux and reflux,

the rhythms of which are governed by changing social circum-

stances, discursive dispositions, and insriturional sites of culture.

1n rhe foHowing chaprers 1 shaH be considering rhe hiscory of par-

odic forms in rhe modern (i.e. post-medieval) world, where the

relations of discourse can be reconsrructed wirh greater confi-

dence, bur where rhe culrural work performed by parody iseguaHyambivalenr.

3PARODY IN THE NOVEL

A ONE-SIDED HISTORY OF THE NOVEL

lr would be perfecrly possible ro wrire the hisrory of rhe European

novel, ar least since Don Quixote at the beginning of rhe seven

reemh cemury, in rerms which place a central emphasis upon it

use of parody. In such a crirical hisrory, the novel esrablishes irsel

and irs credentials for serious consideration by the deployment o

parody, which it uses co devalue alternarive genres and their way

of depiering the world. Cenrral ro this account, which does exist

rhough my emphasis on parody (rather rhan irony) is unusual,

the distinerion between rhe novel and romance. This genre has bee

rhe burr of parody since Cervantes, though, as we shall see, man

orher genres have come co rake rhe place of romance as the objee

of novelistic arrack via parody. 1 Romance is above all the genre o

wish-fulfilmenr, ruled by coincidence and wonder - which ar

other names for the aerion of Providence. The novel, by conrrasr, is

more fully secular genre, inhabiting the world as it is and not a

it mighr be, and consistt;.or!y debunking the claims of romance b

making them bump up against the harder, bur also more ordinary

faers of exisrence, Parody is the favoured mode for performi~se

~s of debunkTng, carrying our jusr thar polemical function which

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56 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

I have argued, defines ir; parody rhereforeemers imo rhe very rexrure

of rhe novel, defining irs relar ion ro orher devalued modes and esrab-

lishing irs claims for a more reallsuc apprehension of human life.

The firsr half of rhis chaprer consisrs of a one-sided hisrory of

rhe novel in rhese rerms - whar ar rimes I shall refer ro as a 'pura-

rive' hisrory, for while Ir is cerra,nly a possible one, I(S parrtcular

emphases may need subsequem correcrion. I srarr wirh a consid-

erarion o f Don Quixole, whI ch i s o fre n of fe re d a s r he ' flr sr'

European novel, and given whar I have jusr suggesred, cerrainly

d eser ves r o be so co nsid er ed . The who le p oim o f rh e n ov el, o ne

can say, is irs arrack upon rhe chivalric romance as a guide ro life;

rhe novel repearedly works by belabouring irs romance-obsessed

he ro, a s g ia ms rum our t o be W ind mi ll s, ar mie s r um our t o be

flocks of sheep, magic helmers barber's basins, and magic porions

h av e a violemly emeric eff ece. This is cerr ainly r he v iew o f rh e

n ov el o ff er ed in irs 'Pr olog ue', as a ( ficr io nal) cor resp on dem o f

C er vames is q uo red to r eassur e r he p ro fessed ly mod esr aur ho r

abour rhe purpose of rhe book:

if I understand it correctly, this book of yours has no need of any of

the things you say it lacks, for it is, from beginning to end, an attackupon the .books of chivalry, of which Aristotle never dreamed or

St. Basil said a word or Cicero had any knowledge ... It has only to

avail itself of imitation in its writing, and the more perfect the imita-

tion the better the work will be, And as this piece of yours aims at

nothing more than to destroy the authority and influence which books

of chivalry have in the world and with the public, there is no need for

you to go begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from

Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles

from saints, but merely to take care that your sentences flow musi-

cally, pleasantly and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words,

setting forth your purpose to the best of your power, and putting YOur

ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity,

(Cervantes, 1981: 13)

PARODY IN THE

We will rerurn ro some aspens of rhis descriprion larer, for

our concisely one powerful and normarive aesrheric for (he

based upon a norion of 'imlrarion' and a narural sryle whic

ferenriares rhe genre from rhe unrealisflc genres which I

d ies And Don QUIXOle IS cerrainly full of parody, ar all lev

begins wlrh a series of parodies In rhe 'Prellmlnary Verse

fixed ro rhe novel irself, and ir proceeds by means of parod

rhe language, convenrions and InCidenrs of rhe chlvalnc rom

ir i s arr ac ki ng, w hi le a ls o ra ki ng i n par ody o f pas rora l

lOdeed, of 'high' sryle more generally. Here is a rypical p

Don Quixo re h as mlsraken r wo f lo ck s o f sheep , h id den b

clo ud s, f or r wo o pp osin g armies, and is d escr ib tn g r he sc

Sancho Panza:

The knight you see over there in yellow armour, who bears u

shield a lion crowned crouching at the feet of a damsel, is the

Laurcalco, lord of the Silver Bridge, The knight in armour with

of gold, who bears on his shield three silver crowns on an azu

is the dreaded Micocolembo, grand duke of Quirocia, That

gigantic frame, on his right hand, is the ever dauntless Brandab

of Boliche, lord of the three Arabias, who for armour wears pent skin, and has for a shield a gate which, according to trad

one of those of the temple that Samson brought to the groun

by his death he revenged himself upon his enemies.

(Cervantes, 1

The Knighr of rhe Doleful Counrenance cominues in simil

for a couple of pages; and even when he is arracked by rhe she

for killing several of rheir sheep, he persisrs in his delusion,

rhe facc rhar Sancho Panza perceives rhe chivalric armies as f

sheep to be furrher evidence of rhe powers of enchanrmenr.

Whar is rhe purpose of rhe parody here, orher rhan rhe

pleasures ir provides of an exrended exercise in fanrasric imi

I e is imp or ranr co no rice, co begin wir h, r har r he wor ds

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~

58 P AR OD Y I N TH E N OV EL

above are a[[ribured ra Don Quixore himself; rhey acr, in facr, as

an indication of his srate of mind and even of a whole memality.--Parody of rhis kind initiates one of irs characrerisric uses in [he

novel over the succeeding cemuries, where falsifying or repudi-

ated forms (chivalric romance, in rhis case) are seen as infecring

rhe memaliry of rhe characrers. The poim of many novels will be

ra bring such characrers ra a saner or healrhier view of the world;

their comedy will spring from the disrance between rhe charac-

ters' mJsrecognJtJOn o f t he world In rhe Iighr of some false

gen~eas, and the everyday acmality which in faer makes it

up: Sheep are misrecognJsed as dauntless knJghrs; laundry boxes

will be misraken for Gothic chesrs (Northanger Abbey); banal

provincial seducers will be dot ed on as heroes of r omance

(Madame Bovary). Cervames indicates the memality of his hero in

a relarively simple way - Quixore sits on his horse and spours

page after page of direcr parody of the chivalric romances which

have turned his brain. Later novels will find orher formal ways of

alluding ra the forms which rhey seek ro repudiare, where rhe

parody will operate sometimes in this exrended way, bur ofren via

passing allusion, turns of phrase, or perhaps exrended ironic inti-mations of their heroes' or heroines' mentaliries. Bur ar all events,

parodied forms are seen here, and will be in rhe succeeding his-

rary of rhe novel, as inhabiring the minds of charaerers, and nov-

el s (rhis is whar makes rhem novels) use parody ro expose this

delusive mentality ro ridicule and correerion.

A furrher point rhen suggests irself in relation to rhe funerion

of parody in Don Quixote and rhe succeeding rradirion: thar i t i s

in deed a weapon in~ulture w~s of the pe~ Cervanres'

claim in rhe Prologue, rhar rhe novel is 'an attack upon the books

of chivalry', is rhe essential conrexr for undersranding his use of

parody. The Early Modern period in Spain, perhaps even across

Europe, was wirness to acure srruggles over rhe values and ideol-

ogy of rhe arisra-military casre, of which chivalric romances such

as Amadis of Gaul and Palmerin of England, borh parodied in Don

P AR OD Y I N TH E N O

Quixote, are prime examples. In later cemuries, when differ

social and culmral battles are being fought, then other forms

be the subject of comenrion, such as Gorhic writing, or bourge

romance, or rhe language of adverrising. In rhese conrexrs,

polemical funerion of parodic imirarion is especially evident.

Finally, we should notice rhe preferred normative version

sryle rhat Cervantes proffers in rhe Prologue, and which can

used to measure rhe absurdiries and exaggerarions of rhe parod

and repudiared gente. The aurhor srresses rhe imporrance of 'i

rarion' (rhar is, imirarion of 'namre'), so rhar sryle itself is a m

rer of ease, pleasantness and simpliciry: 'rake care rhat y

senrences flow musically, pleasantly and plainly, wirh c

proper, and well-placed words, setting forrh your purpose ro

best of your power, and purting your ideas inrelligibly, with

confusion or obscuriry.' Cervantes perhaps anricipares here cer

rypically neoclassical notions of decorum, which emphasise

and clariry in writing; he will cerrainly be followed by a traditi

of novelistic writing and criricism which justifies its repudiati

of orher genres by reference to rhe ease and simpliciry, rhe 'na

ralness', wirh which rhe novel wrires of the world,

Don Quixote, rhen, provides a prororype for rhe European no

in which many of its charaereristic feamres are already appare

Ar rhe very centre of rhis protorype is rhe inregral use of paro

used ofren to indicare rhe delusive menraliry of rhe proragonisr

orher charaerers, and as a weapon in rhe culmre wars in which

novel is engaged, 'Novelness' irself, in faer, is pardy constitut

by rhe use of parody, for rhar is rhe chosen weapon by which

disrincriveness of novel from romance is indicared. How fa

rhis protorype followed in rhe history of rhe novel, especially

rhe novel in Englishl

If we consider rhe hisrary of rhe novel in English in rhe ei

reenth and ninereenrh centuries, ir is apparenr rhar the answer

to a very grear exrenr. Taking rhe work of rhree English noveli

Henry Fielding, Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thacker

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60 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

we can immediarely see rhe cenualiry of parody wirhin rhe genre.

Fielding's use of parody, ar rhe opening momenr of rhe speeracu-

lar rise of rhe novel in English in rhe mid-eighreenrh cenrury, is

absolurely cenrral [Qhis work. He is propelled inro novel-wri'r-

ing, indeed, by rhe desire ro parody rhe work of his conremporary

Samuel Richardson, which he did in rhe shorr polemical work

Shamela (1741). This work, which anricipares rhe parodic work of

rhe more fully novelisricjoseph Andrews (1742), is a direer parodic

assaulr upon Richardson's episrolary novel Pamela (1740-1). In

rhis larrer novel, rhe heroine is a servanr girl who successfully

defends her virrue againsr rhe lascivious assaulrs of her masrer _

so successfully, indeed, rhar he is evenrually forced ro marry her

and thereby ro elevate her ro his own rank in sociery. The moral-

ity of rhis, borh in class and gender rerms, so enraged Fielding

that he was provoked inco writing firsr Shamela and then joseph

Andrews, which parodies Richardson's rexr by supposing a foor-

man brother ro Pamela who comically defends his virrue against

the advances of his female employer.

The narure of rhe parody in Shamela is simple enough:

Thursday Night, Twelve o'Clock.

M rs . j er vi s a nd I a re j us t i n b ed , a nd t he d oo r u nl oc ke d; i f m y m as te r

s ho ul d c om e - Ods bo bs ! I h ea r h im j us t c om in g i n a t t he d o or . You

see I write in the present tense, as Parson Williams says. Well, he is in

bed between us, we both shamming a sleep; he steals his hand into

m y b os om , whi ch I , a s i f i n my s l ee p, p re ss c lo se t o m e wi th m in e,

a nd t he n p re te nd t o aw ak e. - I n o s oo ne r s ee h im, b ut I s cr ea m o ut

to Mrs. Jervis, she feigns likewise but just to come to herself; we both

begin, she to becall, and 1 to be scratch very liberally. After having

m ad e a p re tt y f re e u se o f my f i ng er s, wit ho 'u t a ny g re at r eg ar d t o t he

parts 1 attack'd, 1 counterfeit a Swoon. Mrs. Jervis then cries out, 0 sir,

wha t h av e y ou d on e> y ou h a ve m ur de re d p oo r P am el a: s he i s g on e,

s he i s g on e. -

(Fielding, 1963: 12)

PARODY IN THE N

The rargers of Fielding's sarire are evidenr here: Richardson's

tive explicirness about sexual maners is reinrerprered as pruri

Pamela's innocence is artacked as sha.mmlOg and hypocrisy,

her defence of her virrue is ro be seen as a wholly calculared

ro 'carch' her masrer. The skill of rhe parody is ro sugge

these rhings efficienrly and comically, wirh even a glance a'immediacy' of Richardson's use of rhe presenr tense, perm

by the convencion of the episrolary novel.

Shamela is a specific parody, which is expanded inro rhe

general parody ofjoseph Andrews. If the earlier rexr simply ru

Pamela inca Shamela - the innocenr inro rhe hypocrite

novel anacks its rarger by a process of gender reversal, so

Pamela's brorher, Joseph, has ro defend his virrue againsr rhe

cious advances of his misuess. Joseph, unlike his sisrer, is a

uine innocenc, and some of rhe comedy of rhe novel derives

rhe speeracle of a handsome and vigorous young man innoc

rebuning or failing rb undersrand the inrenrions of a sex

aggressive woman:

' I d on 't i nt en d t o t u rn y ou a wa y, J oe y. ' s ai d s he , a nd s ig he d;

afraid it is not in my power.' She then raised herself a little in he

a nd d is co ve re d o ne o f th e whi te st n ec ks t ha t e ve r wa s s e en ; a t

joseph blushed. 'La" says she, in an affected surprise, 'what

doing? 1have trusted myself with a man alone, naked in bed; sup

y ou s h ou ld h av e a ny wi ck ed i nt en ti on s u po n m y h on ou r, h ow s h

d efe nd my se lf? ' j os ep h p ro te st ed t ha t h e n ev er h ad t he l ea s

d es ig n a ga in st h er . ' No, ' s ay s s he , ' pe rh ap s y ou m a y n o t c a ll

d es ig ns wic ke d; a nd p er ha ps t he y a r e n ot s o. ' - He s wor e t he y

not.

(Fielding, 19

The scene conrinues in a Similar vein wirh Joseph obrusely f

ro act upon Lady Booby's hinrs. The novel is more disrandy

dic ofPamela rhan Shamela, yer is neverrheless close enough

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62 PARODY I N THE NOVEL

ro recognise rhar rhere is a srrong polemical impetus, which means

rhar Joseph A ndrews can be undersrood as raking irs srarring-poinr

from rhe need ro differenriare irself from Richardson's novel.

Fielding's acriviry as a novelisr, rhen, is founded upon his par-

odic disrance from rhe work of Richardson, which, as far asP a me la i s concerned, we can describe as providing a kind of bour-

geois romance, an eighreenrh-cenrury Cinderella srory in which

rhe heroine gers ro marry her class superior rhanks ro her aggres-

sive defence of her virrue, Fielding's parodic assault on rhis ren-

denrious narrarive defines his poinr of deparrure as a novelisr; ir

can irself be subjecred ro diverse evaluarions. On rhe one hand, ir

can be seen as a healrhy rejoinder ro rhe narrowness and prurience

of Richardson's puriranical ideas of sexual virrue. On rhe orher

hand, ir is nor difflculr ro see some conservarive and normarive

judgemenrs operating in Fielding's parodies, which mock

Pamela's class presumprion, and derive rheir humour from rhe

inherendy risible specracle of a sexually aggressive older woman

making advances ro an innocenr young man. Eirher way, rhe pres-

ence of parody, in defining rhe disrahce of Fielding's novel from

the bourgeois romance of Richardson, is sufficiendy clear; equally

evidenr is the use of parody In the cultural clashes of the mid-

eighteenrh cemury over ethics, class, and sexualiry.

Parody is also presem in ~ ng's later novel ,!. E !!1 J .!! ! ! f S (1749),

which repeats the soon-ro-be canonical formula by which rhe novel

is disringuished from romance: Grurh disrlilgUfilies~:r.( w~

from those idle romances which are filled with monsrers, the pro-

ductions, nor of narure, but of dIstempered brains' (Fieldin

1980: ISILJParodY IS, if anyrhing, more widely p~[ lA oJris

later book, where a prevalem nore is the pervasiveness of lighdy

mocked 'high' languages, which are repeatedly made [Qrun up

against the 'low' realaies of l ife. These parodied dialecrs can

appear as mock-heroic, or mock-learned, or, as here, as the vocab-

ulary of the tradi t jona! lover of romance:

PARODY IN THE NOVE

' Oh S op hi a, ' U on es i s a po st ro ph is in g h is a b se nt m is tr es s] ' wo ul

H ea ve n g iv e t h ee t o m y a r m s, h ow b le st w ou ld b e m y co nd it io n

C ur st b e th at f or tu ne w hi ch s et s a d is ta nc e b et we en u s, W a s I b

posse ssed of thee, one only suit of rags thy whole estat e, is there

m an o n e a rt h w ho m I w ou ld e nv yl H ow c on te mp ti ble w ou ld t

bright est Circa ssian beaut y, dres t in all the jewe ls of the Indie

a pp ea r t o m y ey es ! B ut w h y d o I m en ti on a no th er w om a n? C ou ld

think my eyes capab le o f lo o king at any o ther wo man wi th ten dern ess

these h and s sh ou ld tear them fro m my head. No , my Sop hia, i f cr

fortune separates US fo r ever , my so u l shall d oat o n th ee alo ne. '

Jones conrinues in rhis vein, unril:

A t t he se w or ds h e s ta rt ed u p, a nd b eh el d - n ot h i s S op hi a - n o, n o

Circassian maid r ich ly and eleg an tly at ti red for the Gran d Sig nior

s er ag li o. N o; w it ho ut a g ow n, i n a s hi ft t ha t w as s om ew ha t o f

co arsest, an d n o ne o f the cleanest, b ed ewed l ik ewise wi th so me od

i fero us effluv ia, the p ro du ce o f th e d ay's lab ou r, wi th a pi tch -fork

h er h and , Mo lly Seag rim ap proached . . , Here en su ed a par ley, wh i

as I d o n ot think my sel f o b liged to relate, I sh al l o mit . I t i s sufficiethat i t lasted a ful l qu ar ter o f an h ou r , at th e co n clusio n o f wh ich t

retired into the thickest part of the grove.

(Fielding, 1980: 239-4

Fielding parodies here, clearly enough, the hyperboles of Jone

lover's discourse; when confronred wah a far coarser reality In

form of Molly Seagflm, and rhe SImplicity of his own sex

desire, rhese exaggerations collapse, 'Romance' dissolves in

face of 'narure' The parody of Pamela inJoseph Andrews has dev

'-oped imo the more WIdespread general parodIes ofTom Jones, b

in both cases they are founded upon a confidem sense of the w

the world works, and the ways that people (young men especial

behave wahin a.

If Fielding's novels can be defined by their parodic distan

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PARODY IN THE NOVEL

from other, repudiated kinds of writing, that is equally a defini-

tion thar can be applied to the novels of Jane Austen; here, roo,

parody has a cenrral ro~e in the novels 10 marking rheir disrance

from the stigmatised forms. Indeed, her biographer John Halperin

describes her as coming ro literary flower 10 the 1790s 'principally

~

as a parodist' (Halperin, 1986: 66); her Juvenilia, including thesplendid 'Love and Friendship', consist of a series of parodies of a

range of conremporary novelistic styles. Traces of parody remain

throughout her work - in Pride and PreJudice, for example, which

rq may well have been the first of her novels ro be wrirren (under the

tide 'Firsr Impressions'), and which even in its published form

shows affinities ro those youthful parodic exercises. Parody is most

evidenr in anorher early novel, Northanger Abbey (wrirren in 1803

bur published posthumously in 1818). The conformity of this

novel ro our purarive hiscory of rhe genre is sufficiendy indicared

from this texrbook accounr: [fh:origin of the srory is the desire ro

ridicule tales of romance and terror such as Mrs, Radclit'te'S''-------"-="~......,.--,.--.,.-----------:'-::--_.- ....

"Mysteries of Udolpho" and co conrrast with these life ~ it really

~ ~' (Harvey, 1967: 583[pnce again we can see how the novelness

/ of Jane A usten's w or k is consti tured by i ts distance f rom

'romance', here more specifically the Gothic romances popular atrhe end of the eighteenrh cenrury and the beginning of the nine-

reenrh cenrury. As inDon Quixote, parody is deployed ro indicare a

false or infected menrality; rhe her~ine, Catherine Morland, m~~'

recognises rhe world because her head has been filled with the

falsifying and romanricising ideas of Gothic novels.

If rhe role of parody is especially evidenr in Northanger Abbey,

ir can be undersrood as policing rhe fringes of~'s orher nov-

els also, above all in the novelisr's famous irony, which raises a

doubt about so much of her prose. Ironic discourse is, ro use a

phrase of Bakhtin's, 'double-voiced': ir permIts the reafuro

r~e rhat rhere are rwo dlsrlOct consc;Clu~Sbperal 'Tng in

a sinl?le urrerance, an t at their eva uatlve attitudes are "Otthe

us Pride and Prejudice famously begins: 'It is a t~~~h . ! : ! ! 1 i.:.-)

PARODY IN THE

versally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a

forrune, must be in wam of a wlfe]we can recognise here th

are being offered a piece of common wisdom which is simul

ously being subjected ro some scepricism. We can equally

nise that rhere is parody at work here, undersranding p

broadly, for that 'truth universally acknowledged' polem

alludes ro the commonplaces of a somewhat shorr-sighted p

opinion. The phrase itself is parodically expressed, glanclOg

pomposities of Johnsonian English, a highly prestigIOUS fo

prose when Austen was wriring. In faer, rhe banaliries ro

such prose could descend, tn rhe hands of Johnson's succe

are persisrendy parodied throughout the novel in the mora

remarks of Elizabeth's sisrer Mary.(Jhe irony of Jane Au

prose, rherefore, so imporram in indicaring rhe disrance be

mystified ideas and 'life as it really is', is dependenr upon a p

sive if lighdy indicated capaciry for parodU .

The mode IS slml[;irly presem at the marglOs of much

teenrh-cenrury realist fierion, indicating other generic paths

the aurhor mighr have followed, or which she or he is repu

ing. Even the work of the most consistently 'realist' novel

the cenrury, George Eliot, is hedged about by porenrially p

generic disclaimers, especially at the beginning of her

Thus in her very first work of fiction, 'The Sad Forrunes

Rev. Amos Barron', she anricipates the hostiliry of a 'lady r

ro her commonplace rale, 'Mrs Farrhingale, for example,

prefers rhe ideal in fiction; ro whom rragedy means ermine

pers, adultery, and murder; and comedy, the advenrures of

personage who is quire a "character'" (Eliot, 1973: Chapte

Parody is skirring rhe borders of this fierion, tndicaring

author's repudiation of falsifytng genres in favour of the a

sively commonplace narure of her own w[[ring.

Bur rhe ninereemh-cemury novelisr who is mosr h

dependenr upon parody is undoubredly _~. :M.Thackeray,persisrendy uses rhe mode ro esrablish rhe legirimacy of hi

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1

66 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

wfl('lng as against the delusive claIms of the debased, romamlc

genres which encroach upon IL Ir is significam that he is also a

novelist who, in his capacity as a comic Journalist forPunch in the

1840s, provided a series of set-piece specific parodies of comem-

porary novelists called 'Novels by Eminem Hands'. Thackeray'stargets were Bulwer Lyrron, Benjamin Disr~eli, Charles Lever,

G.P.R. James, the aqonymous authoress of Olver-fork' novel (a

genre of gushing fa~tasy about arisrocratic life),Jand Fenimore

Cooper; he even offers a parodic version of himself. But it is more

imporranr ro recognise that he was attacking, nor so much spe-

cific novelists, as whole kinds of novel, such as the military or

hisrorical romance, or romances of high life, or the Newgate

novel (melodramatic crime novels which he saw as romamicising

crime); more generally, he attacked novels written in pretemious

and idealising style.

Here is an excerpt from 'Barbazure', Thackeray's parody of the

his(Qrical romances (after Walter Scorr) of G.P.R. James:

L ik e ma ny a no th er f ab ri c o f fe ud al w ar a nd s pl en do ur , t he o nc e v as t

a nd m ag ni fi ce nt C a st le o f Ba rb az ur e i s n ow a mo ss -g ro wn r ui n . .. In

t he d ay s o f ou r t al e i ts t u rr et s a nd p in na cl es r os e a s s ta te ly , a nd

s ee me d ( to t he p ri de o f s in fu l m an ') a s s tr on g a s th e e t er na l r oc ks o n

w hi ch t he y s t oo d. T he t hr ee m ul le ts o n a g u le w av y r e ve rs ed , s ur -

m ou nt ed b y t he s in op le c ou ch an t O r, th e w el l- kn ow n c og ni sa nc e o f

t he h o u se , b la ze d i n g or ge ou s h er al dr y o n a hu nd re d b an ne rs , s ur -

m ou nti ng a s m an y to we rs . T he lo ng l in es o f ba ttl em en te d w al ls

s pr ea d d ow n t he m ou nt ai n t o th e L o ir e, a nd w er e d e fe nd ed b y t ho u-

sands of s teel -c lad serving-men. Four hundred knights , and s ix t imes

a s m an y a rc he rs f ou gh t r ou nd t he b an ne r o f B ar ba zu re a t B ou vi ne s,

M a lp la qu et , a nd A zi nc ou r. F or h is s e rv ic es a t F on te no y a ga in st t he

E ng li sh , t he h er oi c C ha rl es M a rt el a pp oi nt ed t he f o ur te en th B a ro n

H eredit ary G rand Boot jack of t he ki ngdom of France; and for w eal th ,

a nd f or s p le nd ou r, a nd f or s k il l a nd f am e i n wa r, R ao ul , t he t we nt y-

e ighth Baron, w as i n nowi se i nferi or t o his nobl e ances tors.

PARODY IN THE NOV

T ha t t he B ar on R a ou l l ev ie d t ol l u po n t he r iv er a n d m ai l u p on

s ho re ; t ha t h e no w a n d t he n r an so me d a b ur gh er , p lu nd er ed a n ei

bou r, or drew the fang s of a Jew; that he burn ed an enem y's cas

w it h t he w if e a n d c hi ld re n w it hi n; - t he se w er e p oi nt s f or w hi ch

country knew and respected t he s t out baron.(Thackeray, 1877a: 2

We can see here how .the ideological pOWt of the parody e~rge

fE-omthe playfulness of this passage, which beginsjx imitati

James's style, continues by poking fun at the parade of techni

heraldic ~ms, bur concludes by a more setious arrack on

ethics of feudalism, mistakenly romamicised, we are (Q und

stand, by wr it ing such as James's. The pol emi cal point

Thackeray's parodies is especially rransparem here, as he seek

propose some standards by which the falsifying genres may

me-;sured. In 'Rebecca and Rowena', his fanciful and parrrypa

-dic rewriting of Scan's Ivanhoe, he is explicit about the wadequacof romance, and abour the kinds of novel that should super

them:

Let uS have mi ddle-aged novels , t hen, as w el l as your extremely

n il e l e ge nd s: l et t he y ou ng o ne s b e w ar ne d t ha t t he o ld f o lk s h a

r ight t o be i n teres ti ng: and t ha t a lady may cont inue t o have a

a lt ho ug h s he i s so m ew ha t s to ut er t ha n s he w as w he n a sc ho ol

and a man hi s fee li ngs , a lt hough he gets h is ha i r f rom Truefi tt 's .

(Thackeray, 1877b

Thackeray's specific parodies, then, contribute to an aestheti

the novel which repudiates 'romance' as juvenile, as glamori

feudal military pracrice, and as inadequate (Q the humdrum

ties of the world. The cominUJty of this aesthetic with th

Cervantes is apparem, even if it appears in a more definit

bourgeois version in the writing of the mid-nineteemh-centu

novelisL Furrhermore,~hackeray's parodies do nOl only surr

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' An d t ha t' s wha t y ou 'v e r ea li se d' . s ai d t he c ou nc il lo r. ' Yo u, f ar me rs

and workers in the fields! You, pacific pioneers of civilisation's very

wor k! You , m e n o f p ro gr es s a nd o f mo ra li ty ! You h av e r ea li se d, I s ay ,

that political storms are even more dangerous really than the disor.

d er s o f t he a t mo sp he re . . .'

~ (H 'P P i'''' i, met0", d,,: Rodolph,"p""d, '0", d", ,IIof,

novel, the form which, above all others, is addressed ro 'common

life' in all its unheroic ordinariness.

The place of parody in Thackeray's writing by no means ends

here. His novels are thick with it, as the thousand forms of dis-

course which circulate in the mid-nineteenth century are recycledparodically in his fiCtions, which echo with the burlesqued styles

of court-journalism, sentimental poetry, popular piety, affeCtion-

ate lady-like correspondence, art criticism, schoolbook exercises,

religious tracts, and many other fleetingly captured popular

expressions, turns of phrase, and rones of voice. However, the cen-

tral point remains, that this discursive variety serves ro reinforce

the reliance of the novel, as a form, upon the power of parody ro

establish its particular claims ro truthfulness among. the babble of

competing voices.

I have taken Fielding, Jane Austen and Thackeray as exem-

plary of the development of the noyel in English, in which parody

plays an important role in distinguishing the particular quality of

novelistic truthfulness from the claims of the repudiated genres

wh~h surround it. Pi;ody is equally important in other national

traditions; as just one example, it plays a crucial role in GustaveFlaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), where it establishes the inade-

quacy of the mentality of the inhabitants of provincial France at

whom the novel's ferocious ironies are direCted. In a famous

scene, F1auberr juxtaposes t~9ually discredited mo~ dis-

~, as the speeches at a provJOcial agricultural prize-giving

.are cross-cut with the seduCtion speeches of Madame Bovary's

first lover, Rodolphe:

P ARODY IN THE NOV E

sudden, when you despaired of it. Then your horizons expand, it's l

a v oi ce whi ch c ri es " Th er e i t is !" . Yo u f ee l t h e n ee d t o e nt ru st t o t h

person the confidence of your life, to give everything to them, to sacr

f le e e v er yt hi ng t o t h em ! You d o n' t h av e t o e xp la in y ou rs el f, y ou j u

know. You have met before in your drea~Q

- (Flaub ert, 197 2: 19

Both modes of discourse are subjeCt ro parody here, borh the pub

lic and pompous declamations of the councillor, and the private

hackneyed and wholly calculated expressions of the loveL._Ijuxtaposition of the cwo parodies works to ferocious effect emE

tyin Out both of an sense of truth or affecri~

. import. But parody in Madame Bovary is more undamental ev

than this set-piece' scene suggests\for this is the novel above a

which set.s out to expos.e the ment'ifity of its principal charaCter

whose mmds are seen to be fdled, WIthout exception, wah t

stupidities and false expeCtations of a provJOcial bourgeois civil

satioriJ Parody is the means of indicating this mentality, as t

thoughts and speeches of these charaCters relentlessly expo

themselves as full of cliches, pomposities and second-hanphrases. A pervasive irony permits this to be visible, as in t

scene I have quored, without the explicit intervention of Flaube

to indicate this to the reader.

These are JUSt some indications of the place of parody in t

histOry of the nineteenth-century novel. We can carry forward o

putative history of the novel into the twentieth century, whe

the novel has continued to feed off stigmatised genres as a way

establishing its own parricular truthfulness - (hough we wou

have to extend our list of such genres to include not JUSt(he pe

sistent possibilities of 'romance', but also (he debased ~.oca~u.la

ies of popular jo~~ism~dv~~0Lf!&.~~c:l~Das~_Il1e.9i~_Il1or

generally. This is especially evident in she_SJadu)on of ~ofl

~ng in 3nglish which i ncludes elyri' Waugh and uri

ipa9', but the use of parody to police d - i @Lie 0 novelisti

- / '~'-;d~V 7 ? ~ < -:." / _.~/,..// __- /

P AR OD Y I N T H E N OV EL7

'f

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70 P'PARODY IN THE NOVEL

1

tI

seriousness is apparenr also in the work of the eminenrly non-

comic writer, Doris Lessing. Thus Evelyn Waugh's novels, Vile

Bod ies (1930) and Scoop (1938), are marked at tntervals by paro-

dies of the lying languages of Journalism, memoirs, gossip

columns, and both Bolshevik and Fascist thecotic. A parriculat

pleasure in the latter novel is the ftequenr parody of journalists'telegrams: ' OP POSI TI ON S PL AS HI NG F RONT WARD S PE EDIUES T

STOP AD EN REPORTED PREPA RED WAR WISE FLASH FAC TS

BEAST' (Waugh 1943: 68), but the pervasive irony of the novel

serves co undercut the language of journalism more widely than

this, as is only appropriate in a novel which satirises the journal-

istic profession. Equally, Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means

(1963), set in parr in the literary world of London at the end of

the Second World War, relies at inrervals upon parodies of the

habirual arritudes and language of this world, and also upon a

more widespread irony at the expense of the characreristic valua-

tions of this milieu, as in the first senrence of the novel: 'Long

ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, iillowing

for exceptions.' We can read this in the same way that we read the

opening senrence of P ride a nd P re ju dice , a s a parody of a

widespread opinion which is not the author's, and indeed at theend of the paragraph the same phrase is repeated, bur glossed as a

'general axiom' held up for ironic inspecrion (Spark, 1963: 1). In

a more extended way, we may note the use of parody ,b~

essin i n The Golden ook (1963), which can be seen as a

ve experimenr tn I erenr possib e ways of writing a novel,

and which includes parodic versions of film treatmenrs of a novel

written by the novelist's heroine, with parody again serving as an

indication of a stigmatised genre from which the novel itself

takes its distance.

Finally, to indica(e the conrtnuing pervasiveness of parody tn

the novel, there is the following excerp( fromjona(han Coe's What a

Carve U p .' (1994), a comic tour d'horizon of post-war England,

cenrred upon the monstrous Winshaw family. One of rhem is

PARODY IN THE

Hilary Winshaw, a Thatcherite popular journalist of ru

ambition; havtng had a baby, she is imerviewed for Hellol

Zlne:

H ILA RY WIN SH A W A N D SIR PETER EA V ES

H usband-and-w i fe t eam are so happy w i th baby Josephine 'our l ove for each other didn 't need s trengtheni ng'

Maternal l ove shines out of H il ary Wi nshaw 's eyes as she l i ft s

g l ing one-month-ol d daughter Josephi ne high i n t he a ir i n t he

vatory of the happy coupl e' s l ovely South K ens ington home.

w ait ed a l ong t ime for the ir f ir st chil d - H il ary and Si r Peter w e

r ie d a l mo st s ix ye ar s a go , w he n t he y m e t o n th e n e w sp ap er w

cont inues t o edi t and for w hich she s t i ll w r it es a popular w e

u m n - b u t, a s H il ar y t ol d Hello! in this exclusive interview, Jo

w as w el l w or th w ait ing for!

Tell us , H i lary, how did you fee l w hen you f ir st saw your baby

ter?

Well , exhaus ted, for one t hing! I suppose by most people 's s ta

i t w as a n e a sy l ab ou r b ut I c er ta in ly d on 't i nt en d t o go t hr

a ga in i n a h ur ry ! B u t o ne g li mp se o f Jo se ph in e a nd i t a ll

w ort hw hil e. I t w as an amazing feel ing.

(Coe, 199

In case the reader should be in any doubr abour the true

Hilary's feeling rowards (he baby, (he parody of Hellol is fo

by rhis exchange between (he mo(her and (he child's nanny

H i lary s tared malevol ent ly a t her daught er , w atching her face

as she gathered breat h for anot her scream.

'Now w hat' s t he mat ter w i th i t) ' she sa id .

' Jus t w ind, I t hi nk, ' sai d t he nanny.

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74 PAR OD Y IN THE N OVEL

Hila ry fa n n ed h e rs elf with th e me n u.

' We ll c an 't y ou t ak e i t ou ts id e f or a w hi le ? I t' s s ho wi ng US u p i n

front of everybody.'

(ibid. 80)

The juxtaposirion of the two passages ISsufficiem ro discredit rhe

parodied writing ofHellol; nor unlike Thackeray's novels, in faer,

What a Carve Up.' is full of the diverse languages of the comem-

porary world, many of them drawn from popular or commercial

culeure. This coo is a novel which can confidemly switch from a

parodied and inauchemic language co one which reveals more

accurately the comours of the world we aceually inhabir.

Taking these writers, from Cervames ro Thacke.@Y and,---------_. --..

F~:::b:..::e~r::...t,~::.an:.:.d~f~r~o:..:.:..m..:A.::u::::s::.:t~e""Q'-r.o "'-- 'W . . a ~ ! ! 'e g , . . . h . . . . . S'"jP..a.r""'k....,~_in-,g~a_n_d_C_~~,as

exemplary, we have succeeded in constructing a hiscory of the

novel in which parody is cemral. This hiswry is cognate with one

powerful cradition of novel-criticism - in which rhe novel is

defined by its distance from 'romance' or other stigmatised gen-

res, and which operates with a confidem and normative notion of

realism.[p~rody serves the purposes of realism in this accoum,because it holds up w ridicule rhose falsifying genres which pffer

wonder and wish-fulfilmem in rhe place of sober realism.' To

, measure the absurdities of the repudiated genres, the novel

)

1instead offers a model of sobe natural prose w hi ch i s bener

i fined to the ' . 'life as it is ' uHhermore, parody i s us ed

. as owerful device in the cu ture wars which surround writing;

conflicts over genre are inextricably linked with confliers over

class, as we saw especially in the cases of Cervames, Fielding and

Thackeray. Parody in the novel - a one-sided conclusion, but a

true one - is a weapon wielded on behalf of sturdy common sense,

and against the attractions of self-delusion and make-believe,

however exalted their origin,

PAR OD Y IN THE N OVEL

T HE H IS TO R Y O F TH E N O VE L I N A NO T HE R A SP EC T

There are, however, several aspeers of this 'hisrory of the novel

and the place of parody in it, which might give one pause. Ther

is, for example, a ceHain arbirrariness in begInnIng a hisrory o

the modern European novel WIth Cervames, rarher than wit

Rabelais, who was writing some sixty or sevemy years before th

publicarion of Don Quixole. Rabelais's influence on the subsequem

hiswry of the novel is at least as great as Cervames's, and his u

of parody, though very differem, is JUStas cemral ro his writing

Moreover, the accoum I have given fails co investigate the generi

rooes of Don Quixote itself; perhaps its parodic praerice develop

our of some other and profoundly popular 'pre-novelistic' cultura

praerices. Third, even within the novels that I have included

my pUtative hisrory, the praerice of parody is noe as relendessly

negative and normative as I have made it appear. The Englis

critic George Saimsbury once described Thackeray as providing

boeh 'romance, and satire of romance'; perhaps some suc

ambivalence is more widespread in, and charaereristic of, th

novel rradition than I have allowed.

Bur the most telling reason for recognising the one-sidednes

of that constiturively 'ami-romamic' history of the novel is th

faer that it requires a very pareicular seleaion from the novelisti

tradition ro sustain ir. It may noe have escaped your anenrion

that some of the repudiated genres which 'novels' parody an

repudiate are themselves novelistic ones: the novels of Richardson

Gothic, Newgate, 'silver-fork', milirary-hisrorical, and sensatio

novels. In shore, my one-sided hisrory of the novel, based as it

on a scrong tradirion of novel criricism in English, is a fierce

normative and seleerive one. I might even go so far as ro say th

the previous seer ion of this chapter was aparo dy,

Ie is cereainly possible ro tell a differem srory wirh respe

ro the novel and parody, even using rhe same body of evidenc

This other swry is a more Bakhtinian one, in which the nove

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(,

\.

76 P AR OD Y IN T HE N OV EL

relarionship [Qorher genres is nor solely hosrile - for rhe novel has a

capacity [Qdevour other genres wirh varying degrees of parody.

Bakhrin indeed speaks of a 'comperirion berween the genres', but

the work of the novel, in this more inclusive view, is not so much

notmative as sceptical and relativising',~erhaps it is n~t the false-

ness of p~e~a~ makes the~ co r c a ; ; - - burtheit (5'Qt.:sidedSeriousn~ the rrue enemy of the chivalric

on Quixote is nor .realism' bur Sancho Panza's

aftE,erire-driven humaniry. Novelisric parody, in rhis second more

inclusive accou!1r, does n' cancel rhose e _~ich ir

auacks; ir includes them among rhe possible voices in a comperi-

r;~le our of which rhe novel is consricured.

This more all-embracing view also leads us to reconsider rhose

culrural confliers in which novelisric parody rakes on irs specific

force. One of rhe difficulries of rhar one-sided 'history of rhe

novel' was rhar ir could be resolved into a history of rhe conflicr

berween rrurh and error; in orher words Ir IS a deeply Ideological

account 10 w0ich a princip le of s ober ~~~I~~~Q. __ ~~!

novel is consrantly bar-dillg agalOsr rhe forces of delusion and

wish:fulbIment em156C1iedin romance In irs various generic man-

ifesrarions, If on rhe contrary we see rhe novel as mobilising rhe

full range ofd~any~iOd, and

drawing upon specific popular energl-sO;-wenave perhaps

rhe ground for a more fully historical aCcount of parody, and nor

only as ir operares in rhe novel.

Thus as far as Don Quixote is concerned, we need nor only rely

on rhar moment in rhe Prologue when Cervantes invokes a sim-

ple nor ion of 'imirarion' ro help us undersrand rhe resources upon

which rhe novel is drawing. Parody of rhe chivalric romance was

nor, in faer, invented by Cervantes; rhere is a popul~r ballad farce,

pre-daring rhe novel, which equally features a man obsessed by

~uch romances, and which is indeed cired as one of irs 'sources'.

And if Sancho Panza is rhe rrue antidore to rhe chivalric romance,.. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

then ir would seem rhar Cervantes is invoking rhe praerice of

P AR OD Y IN T HE N O

popular laughrer in his parodies as much as more scholarly

normarive canons of realis~ Finally, we can glance back to

rradirions of serio-comic wriring, srretching back rhrough

medieval period to rhe ancient world, in which parody has pla

a central place. In rhis greatly expanded contexr for rhe nove

can be seen as a sire in which mulriple discourses are pur

play; novels rake rheir energy from rhe panicular eruprion

popular laughter rhar charaererises Early Modern Europe. Par

in this account, is much less simply negarive and conservar

much more fully generous and telarivising,

Comparable correerions need to be made for many of rhe ex

ples rhat I adduced, bringing [Qbear, nor so much rhe for

rrlith againsr error, as rhe panicular play of discursive f

which surround rhe novels I have discussed. Thus in recons

ing rhe case of Thackeray, we would have to consider rhe par

lar milieu our of which his wriring emerged in rhe lare 1830s

1840s: rhe world of comic magazines and mildly ~e~n

~lism of w h ic r /P u n c iJ A s rhe besr known produer, is is a w

10which discourses circulare and are recycled at high spee

which a mulritude of forms josrle and compere wirh each O

and in which everyrhing is subjeer to parody in varying de

of hosriliry, Thus whde Ir is cenainly rrue to say rhar Thack

habirually contrasrs 'romance' co some more recalcirranr prin

ar work In rhe world and represented in novels (and he is

cially likely [Q do so ar moments of refleerive seriousness),

also rrue rhar rhere is a more playful impulse ar work in his

ing which cakes great pleasure in rhe myriad discourses inclu

His parodies, in faer, do nor always suggest 'realism' as rhe

marive orher, bur rarher a pleasure in rhe variery of discourse

pled, at rimes, with a more subversive scepri~ abou

discursive forms. In rhis his novels can be rhoughr of as repro

i0n rheir own disrinctive ways, rhe discursive comper

which charaererised rhe magazmes from which rhey emerged.

So while it is cenainly possible co tell the history of the

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78 PARODY IN THE NOVEL PARODY IN THE NOVEL

~abelajs's grear novel from rhe mid-sixreenth century (rhe four

books of which are entitled Garganlua, Panlagruel, and rhen rhe

Third and Fourrh Books), provides the besr starring-point fo

considering rhis tradition, bur rhese writings rhemselves spring

from popular-cultural and learned praerices that long pre-dare th

books' actual publicarion. Rabelais's writings are at once learned

and a satire upon learning; they swing wildly from parodic schol

arly lisrs compiled ar ludicrous lengrh, to celebrations of the gar

gantuan guzzlings, belchings, pissings and evacuations of th

giam bodies who inhabir the novel. Bakhtin suggests that th

social and histOrical ground for this writing is rhe late medieva

and Early Modern ensemble of cultural praerices known as carnI

val, charaererised by feasring, popular festivities, and the mocker

of all rhar is official and sacred. If he is correer, Rabelais's writing

reproduces, in irs parodies, some of those popular-fesrive arrirude

which hold the discourse of the official world up to ridicule. W

can consider rhe following parody of learned discourse in th

context; ir comes in Chaprer 6 of Panlagruel - 'How Pamagrue

mer wirh a Limosin, who affeered ro speak in learned phrase':

'My frien d, ' [ask ed Pantag ru el, ] ' from wh en ce co mest tho u n o w?' Th

s ch ola r a ns we re d h im , 'F ro m t he a/me, inc/yre, and celebrate

acad emy , wh ich i s v oci rared Lureria.' 'What i s th e mean in g o f th is

said Pantag ru el to on e o f h is men. ' It i s' , answered h e, ' from Paris

' Th ou c om e st f ro m P ar is , t he n, ' s ai d P an ta gr ue l; ' an d h ow d o y

s pe nd y ou r t i me t he re , y ou , m y m as te rs , t he s tu de nt s o f P ar is ?' T

scholar an swered , 'We rransfrerare the sequan at the di/ucal and c

pus cul; we deambulare by the compires and quadrines of the urb;

despumare the larial verbocinarion; and like verisimi/arie amorabons

we caprat th e b en ev olence o f the omnljuga/, omniform, and omnige

nal fceminine sex; upon certain diecules we invisat the lupanares, an

in a venerian exrase inculcate our veretres, in to the penetissime

recesses of the pudends of these amicabilissim meretricules.

(Rabelais, n.d.: 13

in the way that I have done, ir is also a very parrial way of doing

so, and a fuller accoum of rhe place of parody in rhis srory would

recognise a much more inclusive ambivalence as charaererisric of

ir . oreover, ro insisr on a principle of 'realism' as rhe normarive

o her rypically suggested by parody is ro recruir rhe mode tOo

mply ro that conservative 'policing' funerion which is cerrainly

9.QLDLU~ers bur not the only OAe. We can get a very differ-

em stOry, much more open ro the comic and destabilising capaci-

ties of parody, if we tell the srory of the European novel nor as

passing from Cervames through Fielding, Austen and Thackeray

imo the twemieth cemury, bur as passing from Rabelais, Sterne's

TriJlrarn Shandy and on to Joyce's Ulysses.

[Let us consider the place of arod in the novel from this other

perspeerive, in which the funerion of the mo e is nor normative but

destabilising, for if one discursive for erhaps all

discour se can be, and t here i no seE round of know led on

which we can reVrhe alternative novelistic tradition which ~uns

f~ Rabelais roJoyce, and fo ward into the present in the work of

alman Rushdi and atrickChamois , is learned, scatological,

fantastic, an wildly inc uSlve 0

iscursive sryles drawn from alldireerions, high and low, academic and popular. It makes extensive

use of parody in multiple ways as it assimilates, assaults and lov-

ingly reproduces the diverse verbal materials Out of which it is con-

stituted. It is also interesting that this tradition has had a kind of

shadow existence alongside the traditIOn of the novel as 1 first

sketched it. This is In parr because ltS vulgarity and bodily realism

have meam that many of the novels of this tradition have had a che-

guered publishing history, including suppression, private publlca-

{'tion, and prosecuti scenlty. But it is also because they may

!be thought of a 'ami-novels', in which the very sustaining conven-

I~itions of narrativ,. sof the novel itself, are parodied: suchI ] , matters as narra[Jve (On[JnuHy and chronologICal progressIOn, con-

r l sistency of 'charaeref', and confidence in rhe ability of language to

V "I" ,""",fully

W~ ".".._.. ~ ..~vr~~~. -,

~,.~....".' I

~ ! ~~

* . .rf "{." .

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80 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

This is slighdy complicated by the nineceemh-cemury rransla-

tion, which tenders Pamagruel's own speech imo now anuquated

forms (Thou comest .... , etc.). Neverrheless, the poim of the par-

ody is plain enough. It is an assault on the barbarous Launate Jar-

gon of scholars, who insist upon rendering French words imo

quasi-Latin equivalems. Close readers with some knowledge atleasr of cod Latin might also have recognised rhe ribald meaning

of rhe scholar's last semence. This is a typical learned joke at the

expense of learning, not unlike rhe various macaronic and pig

Larins once relished by schoolchildren. Bur the grounds of

Rabelais's assault are very differem, as Pamagruel's reacrion W rhe

scholar's jargon makes clear:

' By G-, ' s ai d P an ta gr ue l, ' I wil l te ac h y ou t o s p ea k: b ut f ir st c om e

h it he r, a nd t el l m e whe nc e t ho u a rt ?' T o t hi s t he s ch ol ar a ns we re d:

'The primeval origin o f m y aves and ataves was indigenary of the

Lemovick regions, where requiesceth the corpor of the hagiotat St.

M ar ti al .' ' I u nd er st an d t he e v er y we ll ,' s ai d P an ta gr ue l; ' wh en a ll

c om es t o a l l, t h ou a rt a L im os in , a nd t ho u wil t h e re , b y th y a ff ec te d

speech, counterfeit the Parisians. Well now, come hither; I must show

t he e a ne w t r ic k, a nd h an ds om el y g iv e t he e o ne f li ng .' Wit h t h is h e

t oo k h im b y th e t h ro at , s ay in g t o h im , ' Th ou f la ye st t he L at in ; b y St .

John, I will make thee flay the fox, for I will now flay thee alive.' Then

began the poor Limosin to cry: 'Haw, gwid maaster! haw, Laord, my

h al p a nd S t. M a rs ha w! h aw, I a m wo rr ie d: m y th ro pp le , t he b ea n o f

my cragg is bruk: haw, for Guaad's seck, lawt me lean, mawster; waw,

waw, waw.' ' No w, ' s ai d P an ta gr ue l, ' th ou s pe ak es t n at ur al ly ;' a nd s o

let him go: for the poor Limosin had totally bewrayed and thoroughly

c on sh it h is b re ec he s, w hi ch w er e n ot d ee p a nd l arg e, b ut ma de . : I

queue de mer/us.

(Rabelais, n.d.: 135)

Under threat of violence from Pamagruel, the scholar reverrs

from his affected jargon imo a more' natural' dialect, rhat of hiS

PARODY IN THE N

nauve Limosln, suggested here by the cod Barsetshire of' "

gwid maaster . '" The parody of scholarly affecration,

emerges from the babble of conf1icring dialects 10 sixteemh-c

rury France, a linguisric wodd in a period of f1U1dtransition

where there is no accepted standard dialecr. It is cut a

equally by the conf1icr berween the dialecrs of Paris anLimoges. Pamagruel's imparience is enforced so rhoroughly

the poor scholar shits himself - a teminder, in Bakhtin's word

the lowet bodily srratum, the gay matter from which we

and ro which we will return - the necessary coumerparr r

high-faluring language of the scholar. In short, in these ex

from Rabelais, parody is indeed being deployed in a polem

spirit, against a parriculat vets ion of Ftench based upon a pr

tious copying of Latin; but the more 'natural' version of the

guage offered in place of this stigmatised form is nor

normative correctness, but one of a number of possible po

dialecrs in comperition with each other. In this comext, the

died language takes its place among a babble of languag~~

reproduced in the translarion above. The novel thus become

form which is mosr open ro this linguistic di versiry, and par

but one of rhe ways in which parricular discourses make

entry lOW 1r.

Rabelais's writing is derived from several sources, some,

have seen, popular-cultural, orhers from various learned ki

wriring, like rhe menip.u.ea of amiqu..!lY,and the earodia !!

the medieval wor! (there is considerable comroversy

whet er these rhemselves have roors 10 the popular-festive

of rhe carnival). Carrying forward our alrernarlvehisrory

novel, we can Jump direcrly tolaurence Srerne, v;:hoseM

9Pinions ri Tristram Shandy (1759-67) similarly draws uponous serio-comic modes, and in which parody also plays a

role. In Chaprer XIX of Volume VI of TrJJlram Shandy, Tris

farher, Mr Shandy senior, consults one of his books ro hel

decide in what fashion of breeches ro dress his son. Since ch

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PARODY IN THE NOVEL

82 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

a re b re ec he d a t a bo ut t he a ge o f 4, a nd th e n ov el h as a lr ea dy

reached near rhe end of rhe sevent h vol ume (Out of nine), i t can

be seen that rhe novel's length has far outpaced the span of the

life from whi ch i t takes i ts t i de. However, S handy's t extbook does

not hel p him much, for i t is a vol ume concerned wit h t he dress of

the ancient Romans:

Up on ev ery o th er ar ticle o f an cien t d ress, Rubenius was very commu-

n icative to my father ;- g ave h im a fu ll an d sat isfacto ry acco un t o f

The Toga, or loose gown.

The Chlamys.

The Ephod.

The Tunica, or Jacket.

The Synthesis.

The P~nula.

The Lacerna, with its Cucullus.

The Paludamentum.

The Pr~texta.

Th e Sag um, o r soldier 's Jerk in .

Th e Trab ea: o f wh ich , acco rd in g to Su eto n iu s, there werethree k in d s. -

- Bu t wh at are al l these to th e b reech eS? said my fath er.

(Sterne, 1997: 364-5)

A fai r quest ion, for Ruben/us continues with a similar list for dif-

ferent kinds of R oman shoe, wit h i nformati on on t he mat erials

and col ours of the clothes, on t he ful li ng and dyeing processes

t hat affeC ted R oman garment s, wit h an aCcount of R oman holi.

day wear, and wit h a l earned dispute on t he meani ng of t he Latus

Clavus o r s tr ip e o n t h e s en at or ia l t og a ( St er ne li sr s t he d is -

putants). This chapter is a typical one, for the novel as a whole is

replete wit h t hi s l earned parody of l earning, S terne del ight ing i n

th e d is pl ay o f us el es s k no wl ed ge , a nd t he t ex t p ro gr es si ng b y

''I.~

~ f -~,

~,

'~~

, ; '~..

such digressions. Indeed, i t i s fool ish t o descri be t hem as digres-

sions, for t hey make up t he subst ance of the book, whi ch i s i n one

sense an ensemble of parodic writings.

However, even t hIS account of the novel wil l nor do, because i t

makes i t sound t OO much l ike a colJeC ti on of unconnected ftag-m en ts . O n t he c on tr ar y, w hi le it c er ta in ly d is pl ay s n o 'd ee p-

breathing unity and organic form' in the manner that Henry

James recommends, Tristram Shandy is i~art a parody of rhe

v er y r in ci le s w hic h n ar ra ti ve s a re -c on st ru Ct ed . T hu s i n t he

f in al c ha pt er o f th e s a me v ol um e i n w hi ch t e pa ro dy o f S ha nd y

senior's R oman l earning appears, S terne promi ses t o conti nue his

narrati ve i n a more strai ghtforward way, which he reptesent s as

straight line dtawn across the page:

He concedes that previous volumes have been more citcuitOus,

which he represents by a series of squiggly lInes. Sterne confronrs

here, as he does In numerous other places t hroughoUt t he novel ,

the impOSSIbility of 'straightforward' narrauve. That is to sa}',-~

invite s his rea der s to c onsid er the incom a tib ility bet he

mu t i pl icit y of human experience and t he l i nearit y of narrati ve. I

he c toeS so In(Dis illStdme iIIcomIc and dIagrammatIc form: 'h

does so elsewhere In the novel by i ts most fundament al parQ. dy

namel y of t he possi bJ;t y of recounring a human l ife at all .

' '" 'f ri st ra m h as n ot y et b ee n b re ec he d a nd t he n ov el ; s n ea rl y

t wo-t hi rds compl et e. Thi s i s i n keeping wit h a book i n whi ch t he

h er o t ak es a vo lu me t o ge t c on ce iv ed , a nd a no th er t hr ee t o b

born - 'From this moment', he writes at the end of Volume-IV,

am t o be consi dered as hei r-apparent t o t he Shandy famil y - and

it is f rom this po int pr oper ly, tha t the stor y of m y LIFE and

OPINIONS set s out' (St erne, 1997: 277). In fact, i n order appro-

priately to explain the circumstances attending such actions a

concept ion and birth, S terne (or rat her S handy himself, for this

a fi rst-person narrati ve), has t o go back and explain so many other

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8 : :1 4 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

circumstances that there is a real possibility that the story will

never be told, and that the time taken to tell i t will outrun the

time available, as the narraror will never be able ro catch up with

himself. The parody here, then, is comically metafictive (drawing

arrention to its own fictiveness), ceas'efessly confronting the co[i:.

ditions of irs own possibilirYj~d with that thep;sibiliry of nar-rative itself. -------

I f this is the most fundamental consideration ro which the par-

odies in Tristram Shandy propel us, in other ways also the novel

continues the rradition of Rabelais. It tOOis full of incidental par-

odies, as of the conventions of Preface and Dedication, which

allow Sterne to insert an all-purpose Dedication at the end of

Chapter V III of the First Volume:

My Lord,

' I mainta in this to be a dedica tion, notwiths tanding i ts singulari ty in

the three great ess entials of matter, form and place: I beg, therefore,

you will accept i t as s uch, and tha t you wil l permit me to lay it , with

the most res pectful humili ty , a t your Lordship 's fee t, - when you are

u po n th em - w h ic h y ou c an b e wh en y ou p le ase - a nd t ha t i s, m y

Lord, when ever there is occasion for i t, and I will add, to the best pur-poses too. I h ave the honou r to be,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient,

and most devoted,

and most humble servant,

TRISTRAM SHANDY'

The parody of the fawning style of dedication is plain enough

here; especially enjoyable is the way that the dedicatOr gets into a

tangle with the metaphor of his Lordship's feet, and proceeds to

seek to correct himself, bur only manages to make marrers worse

and worse until he ex[[icates himself with the magnificently

~ft

I[I :

II!

PARODY IN. THE

empty .. _ to the best purposes tOO'. The whole novel is

such parodies, as it is of the special jargons of law, schola

warfare, obsterrics, and religion. As we have seen, the grou

these multiple parodic celebrations of the varieties of langu

not some confidence that, Out of its fantastic garb, discour

represent nature; on the contrary, the novel proliferates

comic scepticism concerning the very bases upon which a

ries, and therefore all novels, are construCted.

One can crace a continuation of this novelistic traditi

English in the nineteenth century, though it appears in

scholarly and less ribald forms, as in the novels and sympo

Tomas Love Peacock, Carlyle and WH Mallock. In all of

parody pays a crucial role in representing, in serio-comic

some of the central intellectual preoccupations of the perio

this whole alternative [[adition of rhe novel erupts most

fully in English in the writing of Joyce, whose Ulysm (192

be seen as a compendium of the discursive possibilities o

twentieth-century Ireland (and perhaps Britain also), in

parody plays a cencral role.

Initially, we can see a kind of parody at work in the w

Joyce represents the so-called 'scream of consciousness' of L

Bloom. Unlike the very different techniques of other Mo

writers such as Virginia Woolf or May Sinclair, Joyce ass

the consciousness of Bloom ou[ of scraps of discourse, r

phrases and tags of contemporary idiom, which are held tO

partly by an associative 'psychological' logic, but are also

arbicrary. Thus as Bloom makes his way around Dublin, hi

is filled with the phrases, slogans, and sounds thar he meer

the following example when he is travelling m the

COrtege of Paddy Dignam:

As they turned into B erkely s tree t a st reetorgan near the baS

over and after them a rol licking rat tl ing s ong of the hal ls . H

body here seen Kelly ? Kay ee doubl e ell wy. Dead marc h from

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v

86 PAR OD Y IN THE N OVEL

H e' s a s b a d a s o ld A n t on io . H e l ef t m e o n m y o wn io . P ir ou et te ! T he

Mater Misericordiae. Eccles s t reet. M y ho u se d own there. Big p lace.

Ward fo r incu rab les there. Very en co uraging . Ou r Lad y's Ho sp ice for

t he d yi ng . D ea dh ou se h an dy u nd er ne at h. W he re o ld M r s R i or da n

d ied . Th ey lo o k terrible the wo men . Her feed in g cu p an d ru b bing h er

m ou th w it h t h e s po on . T he n t he s cr ee n r ou nd h er b ed f or h er t o d ie .

Nice young stude nt that was dres sed that bite the bee gav e me. He's

g on e o v er to th e lying - in h osp ital they to ld me. F ro m o n e ex treme to

the other.

(Joyce, 1968: 99)

This is scarcely parody, though there is the ironic repe(](lOn,

within Bloom's consciousness, of popular-cultural phrases ran-

domly encountered ('Has anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double

e ll wy.'), and of the cliches of everyday discourse which he arrives

at on his own account ( 'From one extreme to the other.').

Volosinov's account of the 0 eration of consciousness, and its con-

stiturion our of the words of anot er, constant y recycled in the

to-and-fro of discourse, seems to me to be very helpful as an ana-

logue for the way Joyce imagines the operation of Bloom's con-

sciousness here (Volosinov, 1976). They are both accounts which

teeter on the verge of parody as the extent and depth of penetra-

tion of socially established discursive fragments, into the mental-

ity of the character, are suggested.

More fully parodic is Joyce's inclusion, in many diverse ways,

of more extended scraps of the many discourses circulating in

Dublin at the beginnIng of the century - of nationalism, religion,

homely piety, British imperialism, the slangs of journalism, liter-

ary criticism and so forth. Thus in the episode which immedi-

arely follows rhe funeral, Bloom visits the newspaper office of rhe

Dublin Telegraphand listens in on the conversation of a gathering

of journalisrs and other writers. Their talk is arbirrarily broken

up by sub-headings ('IN TH E HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN

METROPOLIS', for example), which themselves are parodies of a

PAR OD Y IN THE N OVEL

certain style of journalese, But their talk is also made up of th

cliches, set phrases and familiar jokes which are parr of the read

cynicism of their rrade. At times the text rises to formal parod

as when one of the participants in the conversation, Profess

MacHugh, recalls a moment of fine nationalist oratOry fromuniversity debating society; its premise is the analogy betwee

the Irish under British rule, and the Jews in Egyptian captivit

and I take it up at its climax:

A d u mb b elch o f hu ng er clef t h is sp eech. He l i fted h is vo ice ab ov e

boldly :

_ But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to

accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his

and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would ne

have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage

followed the pillar of the cloud by day.Ge would never have spok

with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai's mountaintop nor e

have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his coun

nance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the

guage of the outlaw'"']

He ceased an d lo o ked at them, en jo ying s ilence.

OMINOUS - FOR HIM!

J . J . O 'M o lloy said n ot wi tho u t regret:

_ And yet he died with out havin g ente red the land of prom ise.

_ A s u dde n-at- the- mom ent-t hough -from -linge ri n g-i Iines s-oft en- p

o us ly -e xp ec to ra te d- de m is e, L en eh an s ai d. A nd w it h a g re at f u

behin d him.

(Joyce, 1968: 14

The force of the parody of the nationalise oraeion is ae l

ambivalent here; ][ certainly is a good enough speech [QWJn

respectful silence of its immediate audience, and cannot sim

be described as an assault on the kind of high-flown rher

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90 PARODY IN THE NOVEL

form of a playscript, with dialogue and stage-direerions taken (Qa

parodic excess of Bosch-like horror:

(The famished snagglerusks of an elderly bawd prorrude from a door.~'

fjway.) .

T H E B A WD : (Her voice whispering huskily) S s t! C o me h er e t il l I tell

you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.

( Joyce , 1968: 427)

And the final meeting berween Bloom and Stephen is narrared.

via a series of ludicrously grandiloquenr quesrions and answers,

parodying the false precision of a cerrain sryle of academicEnglish:

O f w hat d i d t he duum vi ra te de li ber a te duri ng t he i r i t inerar y?

Music , l it er a tur e, I re l and, D ubl in , Pari s, f ri endshi p , w om an, pr os ti .

t ut io n, d ie t, t he i nf lu en ce o f g as li gh t o r t he l ig ht o f th e a rc a nd

glow lam ps on the gr ow t h of adjoi ni ng parahel iot ropic t rees, exposed

corpora t ion em er gency dust bucket s, t he Rom an ca t hol ic chur ch, eccle.

s ias ti cal ce li bacy, t he I r ish na t ion, j esuit educati on, careers , t he s t udy

of m edi ci ne , t he pas t day, t he m al efi cent i nfl uence of t he pr esabbath ,

Stephen's collapse.

D id B l o om d is co ve r c om m on f ac to rs o f s im il ar it y b et we en t he ir

r espect ive l ike and unli ke r eac ti ons t o experi ence?

Both were sens it ive t o ar ti st ic i m pr ess ions m usi ca l i n pr ef erence

to plastic or pictorial. . .

(Joyce, 1968: 586)

In some respeers this repears the learned sarire upon learning rhat

we have seen to characterise this rradirion since before Rabelais _

in this instance by the use of a comically expanded list, and by

the employmenr of a polysyllabic English ('adjoining parahelio-

tropic rrees', erc.) whi~h can be bathetically deflated. The overall

dfeer of these striking shifts of discursive mode, however, is to

PARODY IN THE NOVE

suggest the relativity of all disc0l!rse, in a manner as fundament-;

as that of Rabelais and Sterne.[parody here has become radicall

desrabilising, suggesring thar aJJ discourses are contingently (th

is to say sociaJJy) consrructe1\

FinaJJy, reference should be maaerome overarching intertexrual aJJusion that rhe novel makes, via its t it le, to Homer

Odymy, the ropic of elaborate exposition by scholars since t

novel's publicarion. The episode from which I have jusr quoted

Bloom's meering wirh Srephen in the penultimare section of r

novel, is rhe equivalent in Homer's narrarive to !dlysses'~on

wirh Telemachus near rhe end of rhe Odymy. Does the novel as

whole have a parodic relarion ro .Homer's hypotexr'

This quesrio

can be answered in ar leasr rwo ways. On the one hand, Joyce

work can be read as a modern rewriung of rhe Greek epic, as

inclusive celebrarion of a modern everyman whose odyss

encompasses [he mulrifarious details of conremporary urban li

Ahernarively, some barhos can indeed be read JOtOrhe compar

son, a sense of rhe littleness of this life inrroduced by rhe allusio

It is worth recalling that this ambivalence reproduces t

ambivalenr polemical direction thar we saw in Chaprer 1as cha

acterising parody as a mode.

The afrernative rradirion represenred by Rabelais, Sterne, a

Joyce, has continued into the late twentieth cenrury in rhe writing

of such novelisrs as~alman Rushdie and Parrick Chamoiseau

both, significantly, wrirers from postcolonial counrries. I shall

discussing Rushdie's work more fuJJy in Chapter 6. For now w

need to refleer upon some of rhe consequences of this rewriring

rhe history of rhe novel, and rhe place of parody within it. If

rhe previous section, in the 'one-sided histOry of rhe novel', pa

ody's function had above all been normative, in this other mo

inclusive version: parody points, J1Cl~:~::S:bi~ of a bert

~ of saYing rhJOgs bIH ro [be posslbd h II ays of saY

rhings are equaJJy arbirrary. To help us rhink through parody

this sorr, we need to draw on thinkers whose scepticism does n

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92

~

swp short at the inadequacies of one discoutse, but is extended,:

perhaps, w all of its forms. Bakhtin would certainly be one such.

rhinker, bur perhaps Phiddian (see p.15) is righr, and we need [0:

draw upon Derrida and Barthes as well.;

In rhis alternarive rradition, rhe role of parody can be inter-,~

preted in rwo alternating ways. On rhe one hand, hovering at rhe'.~edges of rhe mode is w be found, not better sense, bur non~e. ~

Certainly in a wholly other field (though on refleccion perhaps ~'

nor so far from Rabelais), parody was central ro rhe evolution of1

nonsense poerry in seventeenth-cemury English verse (see

Chaprer 4). Reading the wrirers in this cradirion, rhere is always

the possibility rhar rheir parodies will rail off into rhe gobblede-

gook thar perhaps lurks ar rhe margins of all discourse. On rhe

other hand, paIQd--.~n be a mode of eelebra..tiQ.nof discursive. ..--- -----. variety, as the parod'id discursive forms rake rheir part in rhe

babble ot voices rhat comend with each other ar all momems in

his wry, though perhaps more fully and more benignly ar some

hen others.;Viewed either way, however, parody in rhis

rradirion of rhe novel is, paradoxically, "'produccive rather rhan

regulative - a paradox only because rhe grearer scepricism abour.~ -

discourse rhar characcerises rhis rradirion produces the more fullyand pervasively parodic wriring.

re;haps we oughr ro abandon rhe ficcion thar rhere are

rwo alrernarive 'rradirions' of rhe novel which use parody in anti-

rherical ways. At rhe beginning of this seccion I suggesred rhar

perhaps even rhe novels I had quoted in my previous one-sided

hisrory were more ambivalent in rheir use of parody rhan I had

allowed. I want ro conclude rhis chapter by suggesring rhar ir is

nor simply a marrer of rwo alrernarive kinds of novel which have

been wrirren in Europe since rhe sixreenth century. Rarher, I

wanr ro suggest rhe inclUSiveness of rhe novel as a form, and rhe

mobiliry and flexibiliry of parody both within and in relation ro

it. If we rake seriously rhe conremion rhar novels emerge from

rhe linguisric and discursive comperirion of hereroglor sociefles,

" '

~>

J

~~.

~;';

'tl"',

PARODY IN THE N

then we must recognise also the myriad possibiliries for p

and the diverse evaluarive arritudes, thar rhe form provides

responsibiliry, then, is perhaps nar so much co rrace alrern

craditions, as co be alert ro rhe diverse ways in which the wo

another are celebtated, berrayed, assaulred, ironised, and

marion in rhe words of particular and specific novels.Dickens's novels exemplify these mulriple possibiliries,

diverse parodic praccices thar characrerise them. The extraord

linguistic vatiety of nineteenth-century England flows rh

his novels, inflected in many differenr direccions. On occ

rhe parody is straightforwardly hosrile: '''We Englishmen ar

Proud of our Consritution, Sir. It Was Bescowed Upon

Providence. No Orher Counrry is so Favoured as This Cou

(Pods nap in Our Mutual Friend). Elsewhere ir is, co use the

memal word, 'affectionate': '''There's wonders in rhe dee

prerry. Think on ir when the winds is roaring and rhe w

rowling. Think on ir when rhe scormy nighrs is so pirch d

as you can't see you hand afore you'" (Caprain Curde in

and Son). On yer orher occasions, as I suggesred in Chap

Dickens's prose moves inco and out of rhe myriad accenrs o

reenrh-century London, indicating rheir presence by no

rhan a lighdy suggesred cliche or a turn of phrase. His pra

a novelist suggesrs borh the inevitability of parody in the

and the range of uses to which ir can be pur.

This accounr of Dickens's wtiting is pardy informed

emphasis of Mikhail Bakhtin's, which stresses the emerge

the novel as a genre from rhe heteroglossic ~;;iety of c

social orders. It is a moO( poinr how thar emphasis can be

~t her accounr thar he gives of one t radit ion wi th

novel, in which novels such as those of Doswevsky are de

as 'di a~'; t hat i s, 10rhe-double-voiced words of the rex

hear~agemeQ[ of author and charaCter to whlch the

does not claim ultimare authoriry for his own poinr of view

is ~l mode of double-voicing, bur it is not necessarily

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94 P AR OD Y IN T HE N OV EL

in this specific sense. Indeed, in'so far as parody i"ssimply

ing or dismissive, it might be thought co be the very opposite

dialogic, since it claims for itself the right co destroy the word

the other. Bur JUStas parody need not refer to one moment only.

in the gamut of linguistic interactions, it is important not to sen-timentalise Bakhtin either, and make the 'dialogic' exclude some

of the more bracing tones that some forms of parody certainly

include. So we can conclude, in a manner that recognises the

great variety of novelistic practice, that parody is certainly a

mode that confronts the word of the author with those of the

characters, understood in the widest sense as those whose lan-

guage enters into the novel, however briefly. Bur this confronta-

tion can Occur in many different ways, and can suggest an eguaUy

diverse range of attirudes, nOt aU of which wiU be ethicaUy

benign or dialogic in the manner that Bakhtin imputes toDostoevsky.

In his parodic dedication to the fifth Book, Treating of the

Heroic Deeds and Saying of the Good Pantagruel', Rabelais con-

cludes by comparing the offer of a book to read to the prospect of

a dish of beans:'

Then be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure ,I say,

you take my advice, and stock yourselves with-good store'of- such

books, as Soon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not

only shell those beans, but even swallow them down like an opiate

cordial, and let them be in you; I say, let them be within you: then you

shall find. my beloved, what good they do to all clever shellers ofbeans,

(Rabelais, n.d.: 540)

Reading, here, is l ikened to the digestive process; but we also

ought [Qconsider writing [Qbe like the digestive process, which

ingests the word of anOther and transforms it. In this Context,

parody is one of the most important rransformative processes. But

.;;:

15

PARODY IN THE NOVE~

~:j .

iwe all know the peculiar digestive charaereristics of the consump-

ftion of beans, and perhaps parody is indeed best likened to ,.,

blowing a raspberry!

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