Category=DCF
Category=DNT
Category=FBA
Category=FBC
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_classics
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Product details
- ISBN 9780199548828
- Weight: 674g
- Dimensions: 161 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2010
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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, are represented in this stunning new anthology, which provides an unparalleled introduction to the parodist's art. The classics of the genre are all here, from Lewis Carroll to Max Beerbohm; but so are scores of lesser known but scarcely less gifted figures, and brilliant contemporaries such as Craig Brown and Wendy Cope.
At every stage there are surprises. Chaucer celebrates Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, 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 in the narrow sense to take in such things as advertisements, legal rituals, political warfare, and a scientific hoax.
John Gross was editor of the TLS from 1973-80 and a staff writer for the New York Times from 1983-9; he was theatre critic for the Sunday Telegraph from 1989-2005. He is the author of books including The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969; revised 1991), Shylock: a Legend and its Legacy (1992, winner of the Heinemann Prize of The Royal Society of Literature), and a memoir, A Double Thread (2001). For Oxford he has edited anthologies of Aphorisms, Essays, Comic Verse, English Prose and After Shakespeare. His most recent anthology is The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (2006, pbk 2008).
