Islamshahr Azad University, Islamshahr Branch Tehran IRAN
Abstract
The vast diversity of the proposed definitions of parody, both before and after the twentieth century, can be an emblem of the lack of a thorough agreement amongst the literary critics about the definition of this literary technique (genre?!). While there is not a comprehensive all-accepted definition of parody, modern and postmodern literatures both exhibit a wide application of it. After looking at the definition of parody under Bakhtin’s dialogic concepts, Genette’s structuralist viewpoints, and Barthes’s poststructuralist notions this study endeavours to put forward a more comprehensive and more applicable definition of parody mainly based on Bakhtin’s dialogic criticism. Parody then can be defined as a deliberate imitation or transformation of a socio-cultural product (including literary and non-literary texts, and utterance in its very broad Bakhtinian understanding of it) that recreates its original subject having at least a playful stance towards it.
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