Travesty (literature)
Travesty is a comical or satirical literary genre, commonly a poetry, in which the plot of a well-known myth or a serious literary work in retold in a comical form.[1][2][3][4] The genre overlaps with parody, but differs from the latter in that a travesty follows the plot of the original, but the style is different, while a parody follows the style, but not necessarily the plot.[5][2][6] Also, a travesty serves primarily for an amusement of the reader, while a parody is often a literary weapon.[4]
Etymology
[edit]Paul Scarron's title "Virgile travesti" gave rise to the English term for the genre.[1] The French verb travestir means "to change the dress", "to disguise"; it also gave rise to other meanings of the word "travesty".
Examples
[edit]Examples are multiple travesties of Virgil,[6] such as Giovanni Battista Lalli's L'Eneide travestita (1634), Paul Scarron's "Virgile travesti" (1648–52)[1] and Aloys Blumauer's "Virgil's Aeneid" (1783). In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595–96), the humorous retelling of the Pyramus and Thisbe legend may be considered as an early example of the genre.[1]
In 1791 the Russian poet N. P. Osipov published Aeneid Turned Inside Out (Russian: Виргилиева Энеида, вывороченная наизнанку, lit. 'Vergil's Aeneid, turned inside out'). Ivan Kotliarevsky's mock-epic poem Eneida (Ukrainian: Енеїда), written in 1798, is considered to be the first literary work published wholly in the modern Ukrainian language. The Belarusian-language travesty, Aeneid Inside Out was written in the first half of the 19th century and attributed either to Vikentsiy Ravinski (Wincenty Rowiński) or to Ihnat Mankowsky.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c d travesty, Britannica
- ^ a b . Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian). 1906.
- ^ Theodor Verweyen, Gunther Witting, "Travestie". In: Klaus Weimar et al. (eds.), Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, vol. 3, ISBN 978-3-11-091467-2, p. 684
- ^ a b Gero von Wilpert, "Travestie", In: Sachwörterbuch der Literatur (Kröners Taschenausgabe. Vol. 231). 4., Kröner, Stuttgart, 1964, p. 738.
- ^ August Wilhelm Schlegel, Vorlesungen über schöne Litteratur und Kunst, 1802-1803
- ^ a b Susanna Braund, Travesty: The Ultimate Domestication of Epic, 1 June 2019
