Modernist Parody

Book excerpt: Parody often stands accused of producing derivative art deficient in taste and skill. But in the hands of writers such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and Virginia Woolf, the mode engendered revolutionary self-reflexive, critical, and creative practices that were crucial to the development of truly modern art. This book contends that the jauntiness, verve, and daring of high modernism is fundamentally parodic. It arguesthat parody is central to the whole modernist project. As a literary technique, parody provided the means for modernists of many stripes to learn their craft, sharpen their historical sense, definethemselves as post-Victorians, and respond to sources of inspiration while composing.