PARODY (Gr. Tara, beside, and ode, a song), the name given to a burlesque imitation of a serious poem. Its peculiarity is that it preserves the form, and as far as possible the words of the original, and thereby differs from a travesty, which is a looser and less literal kind of burlesque. The invention of parodies is commonly ascribed to the Greeks (from whom, at least, we have derived the name); the first parodist, according to Aris totle, being Ilegemon of 'Chases, who flourished during the Peloponnesian war; accord ing to others. Ilipponax. From the fragments that are extant of ancient parody, we infer that Homer was the favorite subject of comic imitation. Thus Hipponax, in his picture of a glutton, ludicrously insinuates a comparison between the feats of his hero in eating and those of Achilles in fighting, by commencing as follows: Sing, 0 celestial goddess, Eurvmedon, foremost of gluttons, Whose stomach devours like Charybdis, eater unmatched among mortals.
The 734trachornyomachia (Battle of the Frogs and Nice), erroneously ascribed to Homer, is also a happy and harmless specimen of the parody, which, however, soon began to exchange its jocose and inoffensive raillery for a biting and sarcastic banter, of which numerous specimens may be seen in the comedies of.Aristophanes; while the philoso pher Timon of Philus invented, under the name of a new species of satirical par ody. Among the Romans we first meet with this form of literature in the period of the decline; All the power of Nero could not prevent his verses from being parodied by Persius. Among modern nations the French—as might naturally he expected from their
character—have been most addicted-to this literary mimicry. Corneille parodied Chape lain in his Cid, and Racine parodied Corneille. The potpourris of Desangiers are consid ered by his countrymen models of this ungracious kind of literature. Schiller's famous poem of the Bell has been often parodied by German wits. In England, perhaps the best compositions of this nature are the Rejected Addresses of the brothers James and Horace Smith. Many will remember, in particular, the parody on Scott's "Battle of Flod den" in Marnzion, ending 'od rot 'em Were the last words of Higginbotham.
Barnham's Ingoldsby Legends contains a felicitous parody on Wolfe's Lines' on the Burial of Sir John Moore. We quote the first stanza as a specimen: Not a sou had he got, not a guinea or note, Aud he looked most confoundedly flurried As he bolted away without paying his shot, And his landlady after him lahred.
Thackeray's Miscellanies also contain some very clever and satirical prose parodies upon certain of bas brother novelists.
The historical development of the parody has been treated by Moser in Daub's and Creuzer's Studien (6th vol.). See also Moser's Parodiarum Everapla (Ulm. 1819) and Weland's Di Prcecipuis Parodiarunt Homericarant, Scriptoribus (Gott. 1833).