Travesty (literature)

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A literary travesty (from Italian travestire , French travestir , 'to dress up') is a comic genre in which the content of a work or a myth is retained but brought into an inappropriate linguistic form.

shape

Travesty is a form of satirizing writing in which the subject matter of a work is retained but the style is changed. The retention of the content while at the same time stylistic transformation leads to comical effects. However, these require knowledge of the fooled originals. In this respect, the travesty is an intertextual genre.

The change in style can go either way. An elaborate style ( genus sublime ) can become a lower style ( genus humile ) - for example, when a literary classic is traversed in a work of colloquial language . Conversely, a work of trivial literature , for example, can be linguistically changed in such a way that the exquisite choice of words contrasts with the simple content.

According to August Wilhelm Schlegel ( Lectures on Fine Literature and Art , 1802/03), the difference to the parody is that the travesty only takes over the content of the work that it mocks, the texting of which takes place completely independently. Gustav Gerber ( Die Sprache als Kunst , 1885) therefore classified the travesty in the art of poetry , not in the art of language , because the similarity relationships to the original exist exclusively on the content level, while the linguistic form is designed independently of this. In addition, the travesty mostly serves to amuse the readers and, unlike the parody, does not serve as a weapon in literary controversies. However, the distinction cannot be made clearly.

etymology

The word travesty for a comic poetry was borrowed from the synonymous English travesty in the 18th century . In English today, this word means travesty as a noun , as it is described here, and figuratively also distorted image or caricature. As a verb , to travestate means, in addition to the joking remodeling as described here, figuratively distorted, distorted and ridiculed.

The English word travesty was formed in the 17th century from the French verb travestir , prompted by Paul Scarron's piece Le Virgile travesti (1648, English Virgile travesty ). In French the verb travestir means to disguise, figuratively also to disguise a literary work. The noun travestie means masking, but sometimes also a ridiculous role.

Examples

Literary travesties were written more frequently between the 17th and 19th centuries, such as the Virgil Travesties, such as Paul Scarron's Le Virgile travesti (1648–52) and Aloys Blumauer 's Virgils Aeneis (1783). Karl Meisl travested Shakespeare's Othello in everyday language in his Othellerl, the Mohr of Vienna or Die Heilte Jeaersucht from 1806 . Travesties of works by Friedrich Hebbel , Giacomo Meyerbeer and Richard Wagner have come down to us by Johann Nestroy . In Umberto Eco's novel: The Name of the Rose , William von Baskerville recognizes an allusion to the Cena Cypriani in a vision by Adson .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theodor Verweyen, Gunther Witting: Travestie. In: Klaus Weimar et al. (Ed.): Reallexikon der Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, Volume 3, ISBN 978-3-11-091467-2 , p. 684 (accessed via De Gruyter Online)
  2. ^ Gero von Wilpert : Travesty. In: Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 4th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1964, p. 738, DNB 455687854 .
  3. ↑ a b travesty. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 21 : T – Treftig - (XI, 1st section, part 1). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1935, Sp. 1567 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  4. ^ Langenscheidt Large School Dictionary English-German, Langenscheidt, 1977, ISBN 3-468-07123-X
  5. ^ Cassel's German & English Dictionary . Second edition. Cassel, London 1958
  6. ↑ Sachs-Villatte. Encyclopedic French-German and German-French dictionary . Hand and school edition, Langenscheidtsche Verlagsbuchhandlung (Prof. G. Langenscheidt), Berlin-Schöneberg 1909
  7. ↑ Langenscheidt's school dictionary Fr-Dt Dt-Fr . Revised 1968 & 10th edition 1980