Metalanguage and the Book as Model in Romantic Parody

Any study of the relations between metalanguage and parody requires an examination of two groups of phenomena, which are distinct yet constantly overlap (Fr. interfrrent) in the text. For them, I shall use two very general terms: the isotopy of communication and the isotopy of models. Metalanguage creates a form of communication between a narrator and a reader; parody involves an interplay of models. Parody is here defined as the imitation of one discourse - the parodied text (Fr. le parodie) - by a second - the parodying text (Fr. le parodiant) - which amalgamates discordant or heterogeneous codes. At the same time that parody imitates, it also generates multiple strategies destined to identify it as parody and point to the way in which it functions. In other words, parody takes on an important pragmatic function and thus constitutes its own metadiscourse on the isotopy of communication: a discourse at times somewhat less easy to decipher than its actual metalinguistic framework. Any signifying element in a text can be utilized in a communication situation, and parody gives this virtuality a maximum realization. The rather peculiar, but finally exemplary, way the literary model is treated in Le Bol de punch, a short parodic novella published by Gautier in Les Jeunes France in 1833, provides a remarkable demonstration of these phenomena of interference between message and model which are so characteristic of parody

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Metalanguage · Romance · French Literature and Criticism · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy

• Statut sémantique des actes indirects

  Ryszard Zuber•Communications•1980

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