Liberating Parody [microform] : Strategies for Teaching Style / Anne Ricketson Zahlan
- Bib ID:
- 5482611
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Zahlan, Anne Ricketson
- Online Version:
- https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED285191
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- Description:
-
- [Washington, D.C.] : Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse, 1987
- 17 p.
- Summary:
-
Imitation of organizational and sentence patterns is an ancient technique for teaching rhetoric, but to be effective, imitation must be informed, deliberate, and creative. Students must first learn to recognize the characteristics of a given style and then to appreciate the connection between specific stylistic qualities and their cumulative effects. Providing students with a set of questions that dissect the grammar, the vocabulary, and the literary mechanism of passages read in class helps them connect qualities and quantities in prose passages with the effects produced. Reading with an eye to imitation, in addition to inspiring rhetorical strategies, can help student-writers expand their own repertoires of sentence patterns. In addition to other exercises using fiction and nonfiction, an experiment in imitation and parody with Vladimir Nabokov's attack on "Philistines and Philistinism" allowed students at an Illinois university to play games with Nabokovian turns of phrase. Imitation as classroom activity, far from being confining, liberated the students when used as a tool for composing on stylistic models. Another exercise required the students to write an extended definition of "Ramboism," inspired by the Nabokov article. Parodic discourse, according to M.M. Bakhtin, is a hybrid of languages and styles and thus represents dialogue between object and subject--an argument between styles. Parody can act as a bridge from the apprehension and acquisition of the linguistic components from which styles are formed and the creation and mastery of stylistic individuality. As such, parody can prove a valuable tool for the writing teacher. (Sample exercises and references are attached.) (NKA)
- Notes:
-
- ERIC Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (38th, Atlanta, GA, March 19-21, 1987).
- Teachers.
- Practitioners.
- May also be available online. Address as at 14/8/18: https://eric.ed.gov/
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. [Washington D.C.]: ERIC Clearinghouse microfiches : positive.
- Subject:
- Available From:
- ERIC
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Published
- Publication date:
- 1987
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