Parodying the Tradition

Abstract

The dialectical relationship between any poet and the tradition to which he belongs, and is writing within, predetermines, to a large extent, the style of his poetic production. The particular mode of this relationship will be reflected in the topoi, themes, and modes he writes in, or against. In the case of parody, it is the latter, that is, writing against the tradition. The parodist’s target texts (hypotexts) ¹ are usually the tradition’s icons and its most famous and revered texts. In the Arabic tradition, aside from the Qur’ān, the pre-Islamic mu‘allaqāt (seven pre-Islamic odes) have always had that unparalleled iconic status as cultural and linguistic yardsticks, encapsulating not only the language’s aesthetic perfection, but also the cultural values and ethos of an entire era—some of which reinject themselves, under various guises, into the collective cultural unconscious.