PARODY

(Gr. uapa, and ait), a song.) A species of composition in which the form and expre ions of portions or pa ages of grave or serious writings arc closely imitated in similar pa ages of a ridiculous character. Parody is a species of burlesque (see Burlesque); but the imitation is more close and exact than in ordinary burlesque composition. Antiquity has left us no complete works of this species, although some fragments are preserved by A the me us and other writers. The Batrachomyomnchia, the authorship of which is attributed to Homer, though a very ingenious specimen of the burlesque, is not, in the modern sense of the word, a parody. The French critics do not seem to draw an adequate distinction between the nature of a parody and a traves tie. [s. 916]