pastiche


A French word for a parody or literary imitation. Perhaps for humorous or satirical purposes, perhaps as a mere literary exercise or jeu d'espirit, perhaps in all seriousness, a writer imitates the style or technique of some recognized writer or work. Amy Lowell's A Critical Fable (1922) might be called a pastiche, since it is written in the manner of James Russell Lowell's A Fable for Critics (Lowell was her relative; Robert Lowell was related to both Amy and James Russell). In art, a picture is called a pastiche when it manages to catch something of a master's peculiar style; in jazz these are called "quotes." The term is also applied to literary patchworks formed by piecing together extracts from various works by one or several authors. Kenneth Koch has made this integral to his postmodern art.

dictionary definition: pas.tiche n [F, fr. It pasticcio] (1878) 1: a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work; also: such stylistic imitation 2: a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works: potpourri b: hodgepodge -- pas.ti.cheur n


A note on the source.