The romance-parody: a study in Melville, Twain, Purdy and Heller.

Abstract

To criticize one genre according to the standards of another genre serves to confuse more than to clarify. It will be shown that the four prose fictions examined in this work belong to the genre of romance-parody, but are often criticized because they do not conform to the genre of the novel or the genre of the romance. Many contemporary critics, especially Richard Chase and Northrop Frye, refuse to relegate all long prose fiction to one category, the novel. They make a distinction between the novel and the romance, much as Hawthorne had done earlier. According to this distinction, the novel presents the everyday experiences of ordinary people, whereas romance presents extraordinary experiences of character types from myths and legends and has a tendency to be allegorical. The four prose fictions examined in this work have much in common with romance, in light of the above distinctions. However, it will be shown that these fictions use the structure, conventions, and subjects of the romance ironically and satirically. Melville's The Confidence Man is a parody of religion. Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson parodies human justice. James Purdy's Malcolm is a parody of love, al1d Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is a parody of war.