spoof = 'literary imitation'

[Laurence Horn]

On Jan 30, 2014, at 6:26 PM, Jeff Prucher wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      spoof = 'literary imitation'
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> From a blog, 2011:
>>
>>
>> "According to Russian literary historian D. S. Mirsky, Tolstoy's story 'The
>> Prisoner of the Caucasus' was a kind of spoof on a Byronic poem of the same
>> name, written by Aleksandr Pushkin in 1822."
>>
>> OK, the blogger understands that Pushkin's poem is lushly Romantic and
>> Tolstoy's story, written fifty years later, is sober and realistic.
>> Undoubtedly Tolstoy's choice of title suggests that *his* tale is a kind of
>> contrastive commentary on Pushkin. The plots   are quite similar.
>>
>> But it is neither a parody nor a send-up nor a burlesque nor a counterfeit
>> nor anything else that I associate with a "spoof."
>
>
> I believe the word the writer was looking for was "deconstruction."
> Jeff
>
"Variation on a theme from Byron"?

LH

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