While reading Jane Austen: the Secret Radical, I had the irresistible urge to try my own hand at writing a spoof of the type of literary criticism that Helena Kelly employs. It was surprisingly easy -- I had my parodies, published below, written in under an hour. [Update: here is another parody for April Fool's Day]
Modern literary criticism contains two basic elements: One, drawing connections between disparate things in the book which have no obvious relevance to the plot or the theme to find symbolism where none was intended. This is an especially clever technique because it is non-falsifiable. You can pronounce that some inanimate object in the book is freighted with meaning, and nobody can dig the author up out of her grave to contradict you.
Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there Secondly, investing classic literature with overtones of modern attitudes towards sex, gender identity, colonialism, imperialism, race and intersectionalism.
Consider the picnic on Box Hill in Emma. We modern readers can't help thinking about the servants preparing, carrying and setting out the meal, and then waiting respectfully at a distance while the ladies and gentlemen sat and ate it, and then cleaning up after the ladies and gentlemen when they were all finished with their nice al fresco repast. But none of that is mentioned in the novel, only a brief reference to servants and carriages at the end of the passage. To Austen, servants were a fact of life...
Consider the picnic on Box Hill in Emma. We modern readers can't help thinking about the servants preparing, carrying and setting out the meal, and then waiting respectfully at a distance while the ladies and gentlemen sat and ate it, and then cleaning up after the ladies and gentlemen when they were all finished with their nice al fresco repast. But none of that is mentioned in the novel, only a brief reference to servants and carriages at the end of the passage. To Austen, servants were a fact of life...
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