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Parody   /pˈɛrədi/   Listen
Parody

noun
(pl. parodies)
1.
A composition that imitates or misrepresents somebody's style, usually in a humorous way.  Synonyms: burlesque, charade, lampoon, mockery, pasquinade, put-on, sendup, spoof, takeoff, travesty.
2.
Humorous or satirical mimicry.  Synonyms: mockery, takeoff.






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"Parody" Quotes from Famous Books



... fellows in Euston, and that is the reason why they called him "Cider Apples"; for those, as everybody knows, are most always the very poorest of the picking. So the name seemed to be appropriate, as well as a happy parody on that to which he was really entitled. He was the son, or rather the adopted son, of Major Arms Appleby, who, next to President Vanderveer, was the richest man in Euston, and lived in the great, rambling stone mansion that had been in ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... by the reading of some extracts from the autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait for posterity and perspective will ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... burbled Noreen, exploding into a series of chuckles. "'She never flopped again!' We ought to make a parody on that from the ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... PARODY, TERESA. Member of the Academy of San Fernando and of the Academy of San Carlos of Valencia. This artist, who was born in Madrid, early showed an enthusiasm for painting, which she at first practised in various styles, but gradually ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... opposite the window opened; the bell of a hunting-horn appeared in the opening, blown at full blast and waking the echoes in the drawing-room. The curtain of the drama had risen upon a parody, a second incident had changed the pantomime and sentiments of the performers. The old lady fell back in her chair and stopped up her ears with her fingers, as she stamped upon the floor; but it was in vain for her to try to speak, her words were drowned by the racket made by this ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... success of this tragedy, Coleridge was frequently in his company, and on one occasion, in my presence, his Lordship said, "Coleridge, there is one passage in your poems, I have parodied fifty times, and I hope to live long enough to parody it five hundred." That passage I do not remember; but ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... not every knave, nor (let me add) every fool, that is a fit subject for a Dunciad. There must still exist some analogy, if not resemblance of qualities, between the heroes of the two poems, and this in order to admit what neoteric critics call the parody, one of the liveliest graces of the little epic. Thus, it being agreed that the constituent qualities of the greater epic hero are wisdom, bravery, and love, from whence springeth heroic virtue; it followeth that those of the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... chest. Only above the eyebrows, where the sloping forehead and low, curved skull of the ape-man were in sharp contrast to the broad brow and magnificent cranium of the European, could one see any marked difference. At every other point the king was an absurd parody of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... yes, vain! For me too is it, having so much striven, To see this slight snare take thee, and thy soul Which should have climbed to mine, and shared my heaven, Spent on a lower loveliness, whose whole Passion of claim were but a parody Of that kept here ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... all; money corrupting one and another, families sinking to filth, politics turned into a mere treacherous struggle between individuals, and power becoming the prey of the crafty and the impudent! Must not everything surely crumble? Was not this solemn assize of human justice a derisive parody, since all that one found there was an assembly of happy and privileged people defending the shaky edifice which sheltered them, and making use of all the forces they yet retained, to crush a fly—that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... effect pure parody, cartooning. Patent burlesque of tragedy appears in Trin. 820 ff. (Charmides ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... various theatrical performances we organised in those early days, often after elaborate preparation, with the view of amusing ourselves on the birthdays of our elders, I can hardly remember one, save a parody on the romantic play of Sappho, by Grillparzer, in which I took part as one of the singers in the crowd that preceded Phaon's triumphal car. I endeavoured to revive these memories by means of a fine puppet show, which I found among the effects ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... not be considered a suitable form of poem for parody, but this M. Durosoi, or Du Rosoi, accomplished in his Les Jours d'Ariste (1770), and was sent to the Bastille for his pains. The cause of his condemnation was that he had published this work ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... had twice started to leave. He wanted to leave. But each time he found himself chained there by the evil fascination of this monstrous parody. He remained to learn that the Montague girl had come out to the great open spaces to lead a band of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... of tragick and comick style. This accusation is certainly true; Aristophanes often gets into the buskin; but we must examine upon what occasion. He does not take upon him the character of a tragick writer; but, having remarked that his trick of parody was always well received, by a people who liked to laugh at that for which they had been just weeping, he is eternally using the same craft; and there is scarcely any tragedy or striking passage known by memory, by the Athenians, which he does not turn into merriment, by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... as the closing act and satyric drama, with which Wagner the tragedian wished to take leave of us, of himself, and above all of tragedy, in a way which befitted him and his dignity, that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty and most malicious parody of tragedy itself, of all the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of this world, of the most ridiculous form of the unnaturalness of the ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For Parsifal is the subject ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... poem about an Earthly Paradise to say that in this land the old women can be more beautiful than the young. Indeed, I think Walt Whitman, the national poet, has a line somewhere almost precisely to that effect. It sounds like a parody upon Utopia, and the image of the lion lying down with the lamb, to say it is a place where a man might almost fall in love with his mother-in-law. But there is nothing in which the finer side of American gravity and good feeling does more honourably exhibit itself than in ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... rest, has cost much time and long suffering to stem a tide of malice and party, that certain authors have raised against it," Pope wrote to Parnell. Amongst those foremost among the attackers was Addison, who perhaps had not forgotten or forgiven the parody of some of the lines in his play "Cato," which was introduced by Gay in "The What D'ye Call It." Gay, the most easy-going of men, was always stirred by criticism, and in this case he, with unusual energy, sat down to reply to his detractors. "Mr. Addison and his friends had ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... it comes in useful occasionally. I don't see how you could have composed that parody if she hadn't ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... There we used to meet him, and he and Dr. Talmage would exchange reminiscences, serious and ludicrous. One of the Doctor's favourite stories was an account of a terrific fight he saw in India, between a mongoose and a cobra. Mr. Jefferson also had a story, a sort of parody of this, which described a man in delirium tremens watching in imaginary terror a similar fight. Years before this, when the Doctor had delivered his famous sermon in Brooklyn against the stage, Jefferson was ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... on his hind legs, and began to bleat, marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the interested devoutness of the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... in time many others, whose mental processes are a feeble imitation of its own. Thus it came to pass that, as the years rolled on, Harston learned to lean more and more upon his old school-fellow, grafting many of his stern peculiarities upon his own simple vacuous nature, until he became a strange parody of the original. To him Girdlestone was the ideal man, Girdlestone's ways the correct ways, and Girdlestone's opinions the weightiest of all opinions. Forty years of this undeviating fidelity must, however he might conceal it, have made an ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... clever parody both in verses and illustrations. Every yearning, timorous bachelor should read and ponder; so, too, each damsel, read and—"then, in your ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland

... deal of laughter at this parody of Jane Taylor's Village Girl, though Mysie was inclined to be shocked as at ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pulled himself together. He wrote a parody of 'The Minstrel Boy.' I have seen a good many parodies, but never such a parody as that. By return of post came a long envelope bearing the crest of the Scrutinizer. 'At last,' he said, as ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... the prevailing epidemic, writes,—"Sir, there must have been an epidemic of influenza at Cambridge about thirty-three years ago, as in a travesty of Faust, produced at the A. D. C. about that time, occurs a parody of the song 'Di Frienza' from La Traviata, commencing 'Influenza is about, So I'll stay no longer out.' History repeats itself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various

... and parody—they were low-class forces, but forces nevertheless—had already commenced the work of destruction. We are in possession of an abominable little poem of the thirteenth century, which is nothing but a scatological pamphlet directed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... joke lying, of course, in the incorrectness of the punctuation adopted. In general, the Elizabethans were too much in earnest to write absolute nonsense. Nonsense is to be found in Shakespeare, but usually in parody of the euphemists of his time. Some of the personae are made to talk sad stuff, but it has not the merit of being 'precious' in the Lady Saphir's sense. It is very tedious indeed, and one likes to ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... contributed a racy and rattling parody of the modern sensational drama entitled Red Blood: a Western Drama in Two Acts, in which the dramatis personae are an English cowboy (heir to a million dollars without knowing it), an Indian chief (his friend), a wicked uncle, a murderer, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... a rollicking song of the range at one end of the bar, and a chorus of four bellowed a profane parody at the ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... half-price commenced, the row began again in all its pristine glory. At the fall of the curtain it soon became customary to sing "God save the King," the whole of the O.P.'s joining in loyal chorus. Sometimes this was followed by "Rule Britannia;" and, on two or three occasions, by a parody of the national anthem, which excited great laughter. A verse may not be uninteresting ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... because it is hard to say how much of this element is inherent in the subject itself, and how much of it lies in the intention of the author. It is the characteristic of parvenu society to imitate smart society to the best of its ability, and its social functions are a parody of the like events in the upper set. The story of a dinner party, for instance, given by such a nouveau riche as Trimalchio, would constantly remind us by its likeness and its unlikeness, by its sins of omission and commission, of a similar event in correct society. In other words, it would ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... at Amherst was the father of the man at forty-two. It was to the prototype of "The Bench-Legged Fyce," known in Miss French's household as "Dooley," that the boy Eugene attributed his first verse, a parody on the well-known lines, "Oh, had I the wings of a dove!" Dooley's ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... together with the "Messiah," heard for the first time in London, made the stock of twelve performances. The fashionable world ignored him altogether; the newspapers kept a contemptuous silence; comic singers were hired to parody his noblest airs at the great houses; and impudent Horace Walpole had the audacity to say that he "had hired all the goddesses from farces and singers of roast-beef, from between the acts of both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl with never a ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... parody on that sacred date which once had symbolised the birth of Christ had come and gone; the ghastly year was nearing its own death—the bloodiest year, for all its final triumph, that the world had ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... of the weak, but, like the rich man in the parable, they liked their Lazarus afar off," and considered their fraternal pretensions satisfied if they sent their dogs to lick his wounds. No, the Brotherhood movement is no such parody. It is practical Christianity which knows no distinction of colour or boundaries between nations. Our nine months' association with Brother Martin and Brother Timberlake, of the Shernhall Brotherhood, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... such a parody of the pragmatist's opinion, ignoring as it does every element but one of his universe of discourse. The terms of which that universe consists positively forbid any non-realistic interpretation of the function of knowledge defined there. The pragmatizing epistemologist posits there ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... With the parody of a merry smile, he explained, "You know I can't dance with you any more. You know you make my legs tremble like ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... caricaturists from an early period. One of the Turin papyri chronicles the courtship of a shaven priest and a songstress of Amen in a series of spirited vignettes; while on the back of the same sheet are sketched various serio-comic scenes, in which animals parody the pursuits of civilised man. An ass, a lion, a crocodile, and an ape are represented in the act of giving a vocal and instrumental concert; a lion and a gazelle play at draughts; the Pharaoh of all the rats, in a chariot drawn by dogs, gallops to the assault of a fortress ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... met on his faring; every wayside acquaintance seemed old to this amazing young man, and himself seemed to himself the only young thing in the world. Am I imitating the style of these early writings? A man of letters who would parody his early style is no better than the ancient light-o'-love who wears a wig and reddens her cheeks. I must turn to the book to see how far this is true. The first thing I catch sight of is some French, an astonishing dedication written in the form ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... The passage in p. 2, from "His first exploit" to "what it loses in sublimity," "inserted by Dr. L. to preserve the parody of Virgil, and break this number with one more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... genius was entirely military, but who, in affairs of moral, civil, and religious government, made it a matter of policy to contradict and extinguish all the truths of the Revolution, hastened to change all this. He wished to parody Charlemagne. ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine

... at that time permission to perform parodies of operas and of tragedies. I made the acquaintance at that theatre of the celebrated Chantilly, who had been the mistress of the Marechal de Saxe, and was called Favart because the poet of that name had married her. She sang in the parody of 'Thetis et Pelee', by M. de Fontelle, the part of Tonton, amidst deafening applause. Her grace and talent won the love of a man of the greatest merit, the Abbe de Voisenon, with whom I was as intimate as with Crebillon. All the plays performed at the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... come out of our hiding-places and play the piano, and sing her a welcome song. Ethel Todd, one of the Scouts, has written a dandy—a parody on 'Jingle Bells'!" ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... circumstances: "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... MR. THOMAS MITCHELL, an English critic of note, makes these observations upon the character of the Old Comedy: "The Old Comedy, as it is called, in contradistinction to what was afterward named the Middle and the New, stood in the extreme relation of contrariety and parody to the tragedy of the Greeks —it was directed chiefly to the lower orders of society at Athens; it served in some measure the purposes of the modern journal, in which public measures and the topics of the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... Etienne Jodelle, a professional sonnetteer although he is best known as a dramatist, made late in the second half of the sixteenth century an independent endeavour of like kind to stifle by means of parody the vogue of the vituperative sonnet. Jodelle designed a collection of three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to 'hate of a woman,' and he appropriately entitled them 'Contr' Amours' in distinction ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... found in the fact that he was a really great parodist. This may have the appearance of being a paradox, but, as in the case of many other paradoxes, it is not so important whether it is a paradox as whether it is not obviously true. Mere derision, mere contempt, never produced or could produce parody. A man who simply despises Paderewski for having long hair is not necessarily fitted to give an admirable imitation of his particular touch on the piano. If a man wishes to parody Paderewski's style of execution, he must emphatically go through one process first: he must admire it, and even ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... were allowed to wear the same style of dress under penalty of a fine. The members were in two ranks, the "lesser" and the "greater," a parody on the guilds of the city. They were shown the plan of a building, and the "greater" members, furnished with trowels, were obliged to build it in edibles, the "lesser" acting as hodmen, and bringing materials. Pails of ricotta or goat's milk cheese served for mortar, grated cheese for sand, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... the same time an amusing parody of the two great schools of music of the age, that is, of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... brother, Mr. Barthe Brick, familiarly known as the "Brick," who had just commenced a song, a parody upon Fra Diavolo,—a something very, very low, supposed to be sung by a dealer in hearth-stones; who, at the end of each verse, vociferates "who'll buy," heightening the illusion by trundling a chair, on its back, round the family circle, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... rather that the incriminated gesture seems more frankly mechanical when it can be connected with a simple operation, as though it were intentionally mechanical. To suggest this mechanical interpretation ought to be one of the favourite devices of parody. We have reached this result through deduction, but I imagine clowns have long had an intuition of ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... was the appearance of the tall rag-doll, the armature of which was a dead body, moving so stiffly and awkwardly with a sort of horrible parody of life, under the hands that were stripping it, while the bandages rose in heaps around it. Sometimes the bandages held in place pieces of stuff like fringed serviettes intended to fill hollows ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... described by Godwin; his methods; the plot of Caleb Williams; its interest as a story; Godwin's limitations as a novelist; St. Lean; its origin and purpose; outline of the story; the character of Bethlem Gabor; Godwin's treatment of the Rosicrucian legend; a parody of St. Lean; the supernatural in Cloudesley and in Lives of the Necromancers; Moore's Epicurean; Croly's Salathiel; Shelley's youthful enthusiasm for the tale of terror; Zastrozzi; its lack of originality; St. Irvyne; traces of Shelley's ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... from the branches of tall trees, leaping, flying almost, in pursuit of one another for mere fun, that it was sad to put them in prison, where they never lived long, and where they only exhibited a ludicrous and humiliating parody on the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... the Heath he found the platform in possession of the police, who prohibited the meeting and would have none of the speech. The incident was much talked of, and the boy Thackeray set to and wrote in verse a parody on the printed but unspoken oration: Here is the last verse, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... but to excite the Imp of the Perverse, under whose influence he became more merciless than ever. An admirer of this virtue carried to such an extreme that it became a serious fault, as it was assuredly a grievous mistake, humorously characterized him in a parody upon "The Raven," containing the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... first made acquaintance with Mr. Browning, guided to his works by a parody which a lady wrote in our little magazine. Mr. Browning was not a popular poet in 1861. His admirers were few, a little people, but they were not then in the later mood of reverence, they did not awfully question the oracles, as in after ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... rode barefoot, with, perhaps, large iron Gaucho spurs fastened by strips of mare-hide round their ankles, and hanging down below their naked feet. But, not content with the procession of the elders in parrot guise, there was a parody of parodies in the 'cabildo infantil', the band composed of children, who, with the self-same titles as their elders, and in the self-same clothes adjusted to their size, rode close upon their heels. Lastly, as Charlevoix tells us, came 'des lions et des tigres, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... criticism employed in determining the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the beginning to the end, it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the general spirit, but of numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and, even if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Lacking military instruction, provided with fire-arms of the first part of the century, of which one in a hundred might go off in case of need, and for other arms bolos, talibons, old swords, etc., the cuadrilleros are truly a parody on armed force."—TR. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... frailty, may be readily inferred the dissoluteness of those females, who had neither rank nor marriage to render chastity a virtue. But, alas! one need not visit the South Seas, to become acquainted with the possible extent of human infirmity. A cynic might, without such travel, be tempted to parody the words of Sir Robert Walpole, and say, that every woman had her price. The proposition is a harsh one, and the more so as obviously irrefutable. It does, however, read this most important lesson, that there is much greater ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness, coyness, archness and condescension are only the most obvious ones. Some great writers of children's verse—Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear—have successfully hedged themselves against these dangers by insistent comedy and parody (Carroll's "serious" children's verse is maudlin and embarrassing). By this means they have contrived what the child will take as lovely, unintimidating, mysterious, rational nonsense, and what the adult will recognize as a travesty or burlesque ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... of Boulton and Watt, had increased between 1740 and 1780 from 24,000 to 74,000 inhabitants. Watt's partner Boulton started the 'Lunar Society' at Birmingham.[34] Its most prominent member was Erasmus Darwin, famous then for poetry which is chiefly remembered by the parody in the Anti-Jacobin; and now more famous as the advocate of a theory of evolution eclipsed by the teaching of his more famous grandson, and, in any case, a man of remarkable intellectual power. Among those who joined in the proceedings was Edgeworth, who in 1768 was speculating ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... earnest person like her, had little chance with one so full of playful wit and fun as Bessie Keith, to whom her very dignity and susceptibility of annoyance made her the better game. To have involved the grave Rachel in such a parody of an adventure was perfectly irresistible to her, and to expect absolute indifference to it would, as Grace felt, have been requiring mere stupidity. Indeed, there was forbearance in not pushing Rachel further at the moment; but proceeding ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... school, and afterwards, for nigh seven years, to Charterhouse. At eighteen he went up to Cambridge, where he spoke in the Union, wrote in university magazines, criticised Shelley's Revolt of Islam, 'a beautiful poem, though the story is absurd,' and composed a parody on Tennyson's prize poem, Timbuctoo. In 1830 he travelled in Germany, and had his interview at Weimar with Goethe; and from 1831 we find him settled in a London pleader's office, reading law with temporary assiduity, frequenting the theatres and Caves of Harmony, making many literary acquaintances, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... of Fido, but my brother rejected this name as commonplace and unworthy, and straightway named him "Dooley" on the presumption that there was something Hibernian in his face. It was to Dooley that he wrote his first poem, a parody on "O Had I Wings Like a Dove," a song then in great vogue. Near the head of the village street was the home of the Emersons, a large frame house, now standing for more than a century, and in the great yard in front stood the magnificent ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity—and ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... mitigation of the sentence would have implied a doubt as to its justice. Besides courage and distinguished military talents, Major Andre was a proficient in drawing and in music, and showed considerable poetic talent in his humorous Cow-chase, a kind of parody on Chevy-chase, which appeared in three successive parts at New York, the last on the very day of his capture. His fate excited universal sympathy both in America and Europe, and the whole British army went into mourning for him. A mural ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Austrian government provokes you against us, and bids you come against us as a crusade! A crusade! The parody would be ludicrous if it were not so cruel. A crusade against a people which, in the name of Christ, under a banner blessed by the Vicar of Christ, and revered by all the nations, fights to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... is catchy and not uncomfortably original: and the scenery, designed by Captain BAIRNSFATHER, gives one, I should say, as good an idea of the trenches as one can get without going there. In fine I would parody Old Bill and say, "If you knows of a better show, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... My Church-service has an ivory-cross on the back, and it says so, so it must be true. 'Till Death do us part.'—But that's a lie. (With a parody of G.'s manner.) A damned lie! (Recklessly.) Yes, I can swear as well as Trooper Pip. I can't make my head think, though. That's because they cut off my hair. How can one think with one's head all fuzzy? (Pleadingly.) Hold me, Pip! Keep me with you always and always. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... Knickerbocker is one evidence of the vitality of Irving's happy imaginings. In 1809 he had invented a mythical Dutch historian of New York named Diedrich Knickerbocker and fathered upon him a witty parody of Dr. Mitchill's grave "Picture of New York." To read Irving's chapters today is to witness one of the rarest and most agreeable of phenomena, namely, the actual beginning of a legend which the world is unwilling ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... been refreshing himself with Lapsus Calami, by J.K.S., published by MACMILLAN and BOWES. It is a booklet of light verse, containing here and there some remarkably brilliant pieces of satire and parody. The first of two parodies of ROBERT BROWNING is unsurpassable for successful audacity. The last poem in the book is "An Election Address," written for, but apparently not used by, the present ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... to this poem in any of Lincoln's letters, that I have seen, was in April, 1846, when he was writing some verses of his own, and comparing them with those of another budding poet, William Johnson. Johnson had sent to Lincoln a poem which he had written, a parody upon Poe's "Raven." Lincoln had never read the "Raven," but he sent to Johnson some lines of his own, composed after his visit to his old home in Indiana in the fall of 1844. Subsequently, in September, 1846, Lincoln sent him additional lines suggested by the same visit. It is in the letter of ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln

... the Sonnets to be addressed to the Ideal Beauty, we will pass on to the book of Mr. Henry Browne, published in London in 1870. His idea is that the Sonnets are dedicated to William Herbert, afterward earl of Pembroke, and are intended chiefly as a parody upon the reigning fashion of mistress-sonneting and upon the sonneteers of the day, especially Davies and Drayton; that they also contain much which is valuable in the way of autobiography, and that "the key to the whole mystery lies in Shakespeare's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... which—won fair words from Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. Nobody seemed to find it out, and I never mentioned it to the venerable poet, who might not have been pleased with the parody. This is enough to say of these unvalued ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... It happened that the postmen's grievances were very prominent at that time. The Postmaster-General and the trade unionists and others were at fever heat, and excitement ran high. This caricature-parody, therefore, was a sketch with a purpose. It was said at one of the meetings that my pencil "may perhaps touch the public sympathy in behalf of the postman more effectually than any language has been able to do." The wretched thing was thought worthy of an article ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... Parody also helped in its way to the formation of the drama. There was a taste for masking, for the imitation of other people; for the caricaturing of some grave person or of some imposing ceremony, mass for example, for the reproduction of the song ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... bewildered. I turned to the goat-skin-clad, pointed-bearded, bright-eyed Aristide, who, sitting bolt upright in the car, with his hands stretched out, looked like a parody of the god Pan in a hard ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... with head awry, like a broken jumping-jack, something that had once been a man—and her husband. She could touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its human warmth. A wind came up from the desert and blew across the canon's rocky walls into the valley, and the parody of a man ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... political tendency about it, but was avowedly set off against the religion and worship of the Church of England. The whole {181} is political in every sentence; neither more nor less political than the following, which is part of the parody on the Catechism: "What is thy duty towards the Minister? My duty towards the Minister is, to trust him as much as I can; to honor him with all my words, with all my bows, with all my scrapes, and with all my cringes; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... to the seeming parodies found occasionally among Negro Rhymes. The words of most Negro parodies are such that they are not fit for print. We have recorded three: "He Paid Me Seven," Parody on "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep," and Parody on "Reign, Master Jesus, Reign." We can best explain the nature of the Negro Parody by taking that beautiful and touching well-known Jubilee song, "Steal Away to Jesus" and briefly recounting the story ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... give way. Officious zeal is apt to be a curse To those it loves, especially in verse; For easier 'tis to learn and recollect What moves derision than what claims respect. He's not my friend who hawks in every place A waxwork parody of my poor face; Nor were I flattered if some silly wight A stupid poem in my praise should write: The gift would make me blush, and I should dread To travel with my poet, all unread, Down to the street where ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... their rhyming career early, and a partnership production, entitled the Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse (1687), a parody of Dryden's famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After that he rose steadily to eminence, became ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... unarmored vessels, 4 gunboats and 4 special class vessels of the new navy, and 59 iron and wooden vessels of the old navy, of which 30 are in commission. 7. Major Andre, on August 1, 1780, wrote "The Battle of Cow Chace." It was in three cantos, and was a parody on the English ballad of "Chevy Chace." 8. On the 1st of June, 1785, John Adams was introduced by the Marquis of Carmathen to the King of Great Britain as first ambassador extraordinary from the United ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, it heightens the tragic feeling by the irony of contrast. Akin to this is the use to which Shakspere put the old Vice, or Clown, of the moralities. The Fool in Lear, Touchstone in As You Like It, and Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, are a sort of parody of the function of the Greek chorus, commenting the action of the drama with scraps of bitter, or half-crazy, philosophy, and wonderful gleams of insight into the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... third part of Christabel, published in Blackwood for June, 1819, vol. v. p. 286., could have either "perplexed the public," or "pleased Coleridge." In the first place, it was avowedly written by "Morgan Odoherty;" and in the next, it is too palpable a parody to have pleased the original author, who could hardly have been satisfied with the raving rhapsodies put into his mouth, or with the treatment of his innocent and virtuous heroine. This will readily be supposed when it is known that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... morning he was at the place of execution. He saw the fleering rabble, the flinching wretch produced. He looked on for a while at a certain parody of devotion, which seemed to strip the wretch of his last claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling of the remains like a broken jumping-jack. He had been prepared for something terrible, not for ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... weight of testimony such persons offered in sending their loved ones to Virginia to fall beneath the rifle of some Southern boor. It is this silent public opinion of the North which our foreign critics have generally failed to comprehend. They have been so long accustomed to parody the rhetorical elation of our third-rate political speakers, and to represent this as a universal American characteristic, that they signally failed to estimate the genuine emotion with which it is never connected. When the cherished barbarism of slaveholders ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... absolutely necessary characteristic of good humourous poetry.... One charm of writing such as Mr. Seaman's is that it makes us feel quite obliged to poets whom we have never admired for being so good to parody."—Pall ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that Leibniz[11] the politician and Leibniz the theologian were one and the same person; not at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political expediency. We may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the pre-established harmony between nature and grace. Everything happens as though Leibniz were a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his politics. Yes, but equally, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... theatrical ferocity in terms so severe that Voltaire called the passage "a detestable piece of criticism" and ran his blue pencil through it. No doubt the fact is that Vauvenargues saw in the rhetoric of Corneille a parody of his own sentiments, carried to the verge ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world." Then follows a categorical parody of the eighteen grievances, which will be duly considered in this and ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... men went up to the edge of the wall and looked over the plateau. A hundred yards off stood a group of tribesmen formed in some semblance of military order, each with a smoking rifle in his hand. It was like a parody of a formation, and Andover after rubbing his eyes burst into ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... Antinomian, &c., could be levelled against them with fatal effect by every Philistine, and were freely used on this occasion against Milton. He says of himself that he now lived in a world of disesteem. Nor was there wanting, to complete his discomfiture, the practical parody of the doctrine of divorce. A Mistress Attaway, lacewoman in Bell-alley, and she-preacher in. Coleman-street, had been reading Master Milton's book, and remembered that she had an unsanctified husband, who did ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... love-affair with the giantess is as unfunny a thing as ever I yawned over—and if you cease to chuckle at the burlesque pomposity of the style there is nothing left. There are some things which do not lend themselves to sustained parody, and the manner of the Arabian Nights is one of them. But, as I say, I am not going to allow this book to shake my opinion that Mr. CAINE is one of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various

... boy's shoulder, Cleek's eyes were on the lion's face. The huge brute was as meek and as undisturbed as before, and there was actual kindness in its fixed eyes. But of a sudden, when the child's head was on a level with those gaping jaws, the lips curled backward in a ghastly parody of a smile, a weird, uncanny sound whizzed through the bared teeth, the passive body bulked as with a shock, and Cleek had just time to snatch the boy back when the great jaws struck together with a snap that would have splintered a skull of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... This idea is suppported by Shelley's poem Adonais, and by Byron's parody against the reviewers, beginning, "Who killed John ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was persecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a parody upon him; and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... looked upon this awful parody of what had once perhaps been a human face, Zaidie covered hers with her hands and uttered a little moan ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... to be the parody of a celebrated saying of John King of France, who was taken prisoner by the Black Prince at the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... lay—poor, little unburied corpses—upon the narrow circle of earth which, having failed to keep life green within their cells, now denied to them the right of sepulture. A few of the topmost sprouts still struggled to keep up a parody of verdure, and one or two faded flowers had not yet forsaken their calices—a silly piece of devotion on their part! Icy little blasts, squeezing in through the crevices of the window-sash, whistled about the forlorn stalks, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... at Oxford became the hero of a certain circle. He was active and adroit; when he was in the humour, he excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy detachment gave him a place apart. He set a fashion in his clique. Envious undergraduates sought to parody his unaffected lack of zeal and fear; it was a kind of new Byronism more composed and dignified. "Nothing really mattered"; among other things this formula embraced the dons; and though he always meant to be civil, the effect on the college authorities was one of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the middle-aged wife of a field marshal, who is conveniently absent on a hunting expedition. The music is of a passionate order, and the composer, seeking a little the odor of virtue, but with an oracular wink in his eye, says in a descriptive note that it is to be played in the spirit of parody (parodistisch). Unfortunately the audience cannot see the printed direction, and there is no parody in music except extravagance and ineptitude in the utterance of simple things (like the faulty notes of the horns in Mozart's joke on the village musicians, the cadenza for violin ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... yourself, I hope? Now we know what wine you like, you won't have to ask the butler for it next time. Drop in any day, and take pot-luck with us." He came to a standstill in the hall; his brassy rasping voice assumed a new tone—a sort of parody of respect. "Have you been to your family place," he asked, "since your return ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... and we thought we might just as well enjoy ourselves, so we got up an open-air concert. It certainly was a dandy, and we had no end of a time. A lot of the old boys took part; and then some one got up and gave us a parody on "The Sunshine of Your ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... Otto" has even seemed to me, in places, over-written. He now and then ran near the rock of preciosity, though he very seldom piled up his barque on that reef. His style is, to the right reader, a perpetual feast, "a dreiping roast," and his style cannot be parodied. I never saw a parody that came within a league of the jest it aimed at, save one burlesque of the deliberately stilted manner of his "New Arabian Nights." This triumph was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Blanche had been very anxious to try, but Flora had pronounced it nonsense; however, Hector declared that Flora was not his master, tapped at the sliding panel, and charmed Blanche by what she thought a most witty parody of his name as Achilles Lionsrock, Esquire. When the answer came from within, "Ship letter, sir, double postage," they thought it almost uncanny; and Hector's shilling was requited by something so like ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... putting the article into the form of a parody on the "Burial of Sir John Moore"—and a pretty crude parody ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain

... Southside soul in patience, I bought two not very bad cigars for ten cents, and fell to contemplating some eight or nine of the Down-Trodden who were hanging around. I must say that the Down-Trodden did not appear to have been much flattened by the heel of the Oppressor. As I gazed, a foolish parody started ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed and commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees. What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out of the world? What if the false gentleman contrives ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... feeling that night that I had lost touch with life for a long time, and had now been reminded of its quality. That infernal little don's parody of my ruling phrase, "Hate and coarse thinking," stuck in my thoughts like a poisoned dart, a centre of inflammation. Just as a man who is debilitated has no longer the vitality to resist an infection, so my mind, slackened by the crisis of my separation ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... from the Palace. We fired three times without effect; but this affair lost me my place, my master on hearing it forthwith discharged me; he was, as I have said before, very sensitive, and he said this duel of mine was a parody of his own. Being, however, one of the best men in the world, on his discharging me he made me a donation of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... men, who are alone sufficient to make the measures you have taken to place liberty on a solid basis be respected. What avails it that we gain victories if we are not respected in our country. In speaking of Paris, one may parody what Cassius said of Rome: "Of what use to call her queen on the banks of the Seine, when she is the slave ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... "They joined to produce a parody, entitled The Town and Country Mouse, part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends Smart and Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded upon the twice-told jest of the Rehearsal.... There is nothing ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... are friends that do change, and remind us of change, that we should keep them with us, even at a little inconvenience, and not turn them adrift in the world to find a dusty asylum in cheap bookstalls. We are a part of all that we have read, to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson's Ulysses, and we owe some respect, and house-room at least, to the early acquaintances who have begun to bore us, and remind us of the vanity of ambition and the weakness of human purpose. Old school and college ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... been greatly different. Sooner or later, when the stunning effects of the shock had passed off, the murder must have appeared to Rome and Italy in its true colors. The optimates talked of the Constitution. The Constitution in their hands had been a parody of liberty. Caesar's political life had been spent in wresting from them the powers which they had abused. Caesar had punished the oppressors of the provinces. Caesar had forced the nobles to give the people a share of the public lands. Caesar ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... applause greeted the performance of this ribald parody. There were calls for more such psalmody. "Give us another verse, Sergeant." "Tune up again, Dick." "Goon, goon." Lord Dunseveric, who had remained outside, dismounted and stalked through the door. He had caught ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... rivals and friends sleep well in these hard, ebony boxes in the museum at Cairo. Ram had lots of air and elbow room during his spectacular career, and it seems hardly fair that he should be kept on exhibition now, although his mummy is most interesting and always draws a crowd. To parody William a little, ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... very little in any of the microfilm-books about the politics of New Texas and such as it was, it was very scornful. There were such expressions as 'anarchy tempered by assassination,' and 'grotesque parody of democracy.' ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... parody of the strict surveillance under which Dick lived, but from a mixture of lassitude and good nature it did not seem to annoy him too much, and he appeared to be most troubled when Kate murmured that she ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... says that the Efficient Cause must at least have all the perfections of the effect, and for this singular reason: "Si enim ponamus aliquid in idea reperiri quod non fuerit in ejus causa, hoc igitur habet a nihilo;" of which it is scarcely a parody to say, that if there be pepper in the soup there must be pepper in the cook who made it, since otherwise the pepper would be without a cause. A similar fallacy is committed by Cicero, in his second book De Finibus, where, speaking ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Parnellite party for funds has evoked much merriment among Irish Unionists, and much burning scorn from anti-Parnellites—who themselves have much need of the money. A young friend has sent me the following parody, adapted from an old and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... from Whewell, who had just been elected to the mastership, did not cover the cost, and the fellows had to make up the deficit. It was suggested that Whewell might have contributed more had not his wife dissuaded him, and a fellow wrote a parody of "The House that Jack Built" which ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home

... change of mood, so characteristic of him, he passed within the ancient church, and mounting the pulpit, addressed to his companion, who had, at his desire, mounted the cutty stool, or seat of repentance, a parody of the rebuke, which he himself had undergone some time ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp



Words linked to "Parody" :   apery, represent, act, imitation, mimicry, impersonation, caricature, play, mock, parodist



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