Two Kinds of Pastiche

The emergence of the postmodern conception of pastiche in the 1980s and the establishment of the term in the English critical vo-cabulary has led to two competing notions of pastiche and a seemingly endless array of variations in between: on the one hand, pastiche is taken to mean the imitation of one characteristic style;

on the other, it is used of eclectic works which draw elements and styles from various other works. It is of course normal for con-cepts to migrate and to become invested with new meanings; in-deed, such shifts are essential to the development of critical en-quiry. In literary and cultural studies, key concepts like intertextual-ity (Orr; Machacek 523-25), parody (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody;

Rose, Parody) or even literature (Lehtinen 196-99; Rancière 9-14;

Widdowson 26-41) have acquired new meanings and are now be-ing used of different phenomena from what they originally re-ferred to. For instance, up until the eighteenth century, the term literature meant first and foremost learning associated with liter-acy or learning acquired from books. This general meaning nar-rowed gradually in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to “lit-erary knowledge” or the kind of knowledge about lit“lit-erary works which made it possible to make informed aesthetic judgements.

Rather than with learning, the term then became associated with books as physical objects and books as literary works, in other words, the kind of book which is not primarily appreciated for its content and instrumental value but for its aesthetic, emotional and often its moral qualities. This semantic shift corresponds to the new professionalisation in literature evident in the emergence of professional fiction writers and a regulated publishing industry.

Yet, the earlier senses of the term literature are still evoked in some contexts: for example, when we say we are studying litera-ture at the university, we do not simply mean the study of literary

works (novels, poetry, plays) but also the study of “literary knowl-edge” – literary criticism and theory, as well as other branches of learning which help us to understand how literary works work.

The fact that the current sense of the term literature is a fairly re-cent development means that terms like “ancient literature” or

“medieval literature” are basically anachronistic. They are useful and sensible concepts from today’s perspective, but ancient and medieval people would have used different terms and different classifications for talking about “literature”.

The complex history and the multitudinous usage of critical terms often makes it difficult to identify the interrelated questions of the consistent use of a term, awareness of its historical devel-opment and awareness of the distinction between the theoretical concept and those practices or phenomena which it helps to iden-tify and with which it interacts. For instance, when Linda Hutch-eon argues for what she perceives as a productive use of the term parody, she seems to be sliding from the term to the practice and from the present to the past in a way which demonstrates the dif-ficulties of negotiating the historical shifts in definitions and prac-tices:

In my focus on twentieth-century art forms, I hope to suggest that there are probably no transhistorical definitions of parody possible.

Nevertheless, I shall constantly be using examples from other periods to show that there are common denominators to all definitions of parody in all ages – although they are not the ones usually cited. It is modern parodic usage that is forcing us to decide what it is that we shall call parody today. In fact the closest model to present practice was not called parody at all, but imitation. (A Theory of Parody 10, em-phasis original)

Hutcheon’s careful avoidance of an exact definition, which would inevitably be reductive, leads her to balance somewhat uncom-fortably between a practical notion of parody derived from the present parodic usage and the historical continuity of definitions of parody; moreover, it leads her to extend the notion of parody to other forms, such as classical imitation. This makes parody into

an umbrella term for virtually all imitative practices, which threat-ens to undermine the particularity of the term.

Literary concepts are often elastic, open or imprecise. A cer-tain openness and flexibility in relation to the object has been seen as an important element in literary critical terminology (Saariluoma, “Eksaktius” 126-27), but it can also be perceived as a problem, especially when critics use the same term for different ends without clarifying their use or supplying it with the relevant historical contexts. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine the level of exactitude necessary for a shared understanding of the scope and functions of a term, since some concepts tolerate fairly flexible use or indeed benefit from such variety of usages. Take for instance the concept of style: it is used both in everyday lan-guage and in critical discourse in a plethora of ways, but still it seems to retain enough coherence to be intuitively graspable and useful in many contexts. Thus it seems to be an example of a case of an exact definition detracting from the concept’s potential to engage in productive ways with the object.¹ By contrast, other concepts are limited to literary discourse only, and can be defined in a fairly precise manner, such as the sonnet, with its restricted form and conventional themes. Writers have of course pushed the limits of this conception and applied both the form and the term to purposes other than the celebration of (the woes of) love, but these transgressions are nevertheless measured against the fairly consistent idea of what sonnets have been and are usually taken to be. As a literary concept, pastiche seems to be situated somewhere between these two examples: while it is dependent on general and elusive concepts such as style and imitation or compilation, it is also a specialist term denoting a particular practice or the product of that practice (although the particularity of that practice is

1 While the results of such an enquiry may not be conclusive, a discussion on the precise meaning of the concept of style may help us to better understand just why it is so difficult to grasp its meaning precisely. See Goodman (23-40) for an attempt to define the status of style; Genette (Fiction and Diction, 85-141) for an analytic reply; and Compagnon (222-28) for a critical summary of the discussion.

tionable in the light of the dilemma of the two conflicting mean-ings discussed above).

One reason why pastiche is a relevant concept for criticism today is that the complications pertaining to it can make us more attentive to the ways in which we use other concepts and to the background assumptions that govern them. A choice between concepts is always a choice between meanings and values. While the concepts of literary criticism and theory seldom have the kind of political and social repercussions that conceptual history (Be-griffsgeschichte) analyses,² they do have effects on how literature as a human activity is perceived and how the boundaries of language and understanding are delineated. As I sought to demonstrate in the previous part, the debate on pastiche has, from its inception, centered on questions of literary value such as whether pastiche merits consideration in its own right or whether it is seen as a parasitic practice. This debate is not merely one of classification and labelling of works, but participates in a variety of larger de-bates on the raison d’être of literature, its fundamental values and the significance of authorship. Historically one of the main uses of the concept of pastiche has been to illustrate through negation that which is considered valuable or genuine in art and literature.

A critic’s choice between the concepts of parody and pastiche may nowadays imply the adoption of a much larger aesthetic and political agenda, as the cleft between Fredric Jameson’s and Linda Hutcheon’s views on the state of postmodern culture attests.

In the following, I shall first offer a practical, although ad-mittedly fairly simple solution to the present confusion over the meanings of the concept of pastiche and then proceed to a more detailed analysis of the two different conceptions in view of their consistency and applicability. My approach is thus ultimately pragmatic, aiming at productive interaction between theory and practice, but I am aware that a concept such as pastiche could be

2 Focusing on political and social concepts, Begriffgeschichte analyses how concepts such as citizen, state or democracy are spread across the social system; how they become vehicles of ideologies; and how they are used in furthering particular po-litical ends. See Bödeker for the background and objectives of Begriffgeschicte.

analysed differently. As a theoretical concept it could be used irre-spective of particular material practices or works, in which case it would be most useful to measure its significance against its evoca-tive potential as a metaphor for a particular attitude, ideology or poetics within the theoretical framework in which it is used. It could be argued that this is precisely the sense in which the term was evoked in postmodern theory; however, even then it was as-sociated with particular artistic practices, which makes it a concept of practical criticism and as such it has been adopted from Jameson’s writings to wider usage. In my view, the postmodern conceptions of pastiche can and indeed should also be analysed from the point of view of their relevance to understanding actual literary works in their cultural contexts.

In part one of this study, I have already expressed reserva-tions about particular postmodern concepreserva-tions of pastiche; here, however, my viewpoint is slightly different as I will analyse the ways in which contemporary critics have sought to describe pas-tiche as an eclectic literary and artistic practice. Having pointed out some of the problems with this notion, I shall turn to the conception of pastiche as the acknowledged imitation of a par-ticular style which in my view offers a more fruitful and focused basis for critical analysis. My aim is not to censure other uses of the term, but to argue for a conception of pastiche that is relevant to existing literary practices and to the historical background cov-ered in part one, and also to be mindful of the significant devel-opments in pastiche criticism within postmodern cultural theory.

In Travelling Concepts in the Humanities, Mieke Bal makes the obser-vation that “[c]oncepts [. . .] are the sites of debate, awareness of difference, and tentative exchange. Agreeing doesn’t mean agree-ing on content, but agreeagree-ing on the basic rules of the game: if you use a concept at all, you use it in a particular way so that you can meaningfully disagree on content” (13). In my discussion of the critics whose notions of pastiche I find problematic, I am hoping to “disagree meaningfully” so as to be constructive rather than re-ductive in my contribution to the debate on the meaning and sig-nificance of pastiche.

From these conceptual issues I shall proceed to consider the elements of pastiche as stylistic imitation: what makes it a specific literary form? Unlike the more common terms parody and satire, which evoke fairly precise ideas of the kind of practice they refer to, pastiche needs explication, especially in the context of the competing theoretical stances and traditions. Chapter 2.2 will look at pastiche in the context of related literary practices, such as parody and allusion, and discuss the possibility of ex-tending the literary notion of pastiche to other arts. These com-parative perspectives will help to delineate the characteristics of pastiche, understood as the consistent imitation of a recognisable style. The most prominent of these characteristics, the double-edgedness of pastiche, is the topic of the third and last chapter of part II.

A Terminological Solution

My practical solution to the current terminological confusion is similar in principle to that offered by Ingeborg Hoesterey in Pas-tiche: Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature. She correctly identifies a general division in the usage of the term and seeks to illustrate this distinction by introducing two new terms, cento pastiche and (quasi-)homage. However, as I pointed out in chapter 1.3, there are some problems with these denominations, beginning with the terms themselves and extending to the ways in which Hoesterey attempts to distinguish them from each other and from other imi-tative practices such as parody. Another solution is suggested by Richard Dyer, who recommends in Pastiche that the term pasticcio (or pasticcio pastiche) be reserved for eclectic pastiches and the term pastiche to the more specific kind of stylistic imitation (Pastiche 9, 16). He justifies this use by referring to etymology – pasticcio as the pie consisting of various ingredients – but the distinction is open to misunderstandings, because both terms derive from the same eclectic dish and were used synonymously in the eighteenth cen-tury and occasionally later as well. Understanding the distinction

between these near-identical terms also requires a relatively high degree of academic sophistication, and it is therefore unlikely that the usage could be adopted for instance on such everyday occa-sions as newspaper reviews, where the term pastiche occasionally occurs. In journalistic use, the meaning of the term is usually im-plied by the context: if a reviewer writes that “x is a pastiche,”

without giving further specification, he or she usually means a work drawing from a variety of sources, while the formulation “x is a pastiche of y” suggests a concentrated imitation of the style of one particular source. Despite these explicit or implicit specifica-tions, the uses of the term in criticism and in reviews are seldom transparent, not even for someone who is aware of the distinc-tion. My simple suggestion for ameliorating this situation is to add a modifier that indicates the general mode in which the term is used. Thus compilation pastiche could be used of eclectic works which borrow and amend elements from different sources or in-corporate features from diverse styles, while those pastiches which imitate the style of one identifiable source could be called stylistic pastiches.

The modified terms I am proposing have advantages over the suggestions of Hoesterey and Dyer. Their relative transpar-ency serves the ends of communication better than specialist ter-minology which requires a higher level of familiarity with the is-sues in hand. Either term can be used in a descriptive sense to designate a particular literary or artistic practice. My terminologi-cal suggestions are not intended to imply a hierarchiterminologi-cal value judgement between the two practices. Both are legitimate means that can be used in more or less creative ways by writers and art-ists. Furthermore, I do not think that either of the practices can be attributed to postmodernism only: as a critical term pastiche has historical boundaries, but those boundaries do not coincide with postmodernism. For these reasons, the terms compilation pastiche and stylistic pastiche are not entirely synonymous with Hoesterey’s cento pastiche and (quasi-)homage, and when I dis-cuss her analyses of cento pastiches below as examples of how how the notion of compilation pastiche is applied by theorists, I

mean to suggest that cento pastiche (Hoesterey’s term for eman-cipatory postmodern eclecticism) is a kind of a subgroup of com-pilation pastiche.

While I believe that a terminological adjustment of some kind – whether it be that of Hoesterey, Dyer or my own – is needed, these attempts at solving the conceptual problem suffer from at least two drawbacks. For the first, they lose the flexibility of the single term, which can be used both as a noun and a verb.

Pasticcio and (quasi-)homage cannot be used in the verb sense (al-though I wonder if it is possible to “pay (quasi-)homage”), and while stylistic pastiche turns effortlessly into a verb structure (“to pastiche the style of”), compilation pastiche does not.³ For the second, in highlighting the difference between the two modes of pastiche, the terms blot out the important middle ground of vaguer notions which combine elements from both conceptions or indeed create an artificial opposition between practices that ac-tually coexist in many forms. Despite these problems, I shall for the moment adhere to these terms in order to highlight the never-theless markedly different emphases in the two main approaches to pastiche in contemporary criticism. While critics like Hoesterey and Dyer – and Lorna Sage in a useful dictionary article on pas-tiche in the Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms – have noted this terminological bifurcation, its scope and implications have not been investigated in detail in previous studies of pastiche.

Compilation Pastiche

The compilation sense of pastiche is now the more frequent, es-pecially in English-language criticism, but the meaning, signifi-cance and scope of the concept seem to vary from critic to critic.

In this section, I shall focus on descriptions of compilation pas-tiche in order to arrive at a more precise conception of this

3 It is grammatically possible to “compile a pastiche” of different materials, but I have never seen this expression in use.

ity which I shall then relate to the concept of intertextuality and assess in a historical context. The analyses of examples of compi-lation pastiche will further illustrate what I perceive as its main problems: firstly, its indefinablity, which relates to its rather strained position between a theoretical keyword that refers to lar-ger ideological suppositions and a practical concept that seeks to identify particular practices; secondly, its somewhat artificial re-striction to postmodernist literary (or cultural) works. Eclectic form, both in contemporary and older literature, is an important and difficult object of study, because of the loaded attitudes to-wards it and the miscellaneous theoretical models and concepts used in its analysis. As I shall seek to demonstrate in this and the following section, the concept of compilation pastiche does not altogether successfully meet these challenges.

In the descriptions of compilation pastiche in recent criti-cism, the pasticheur appears as a kind of bricoleur, a collector and compiler of materials provided by culture, from which he or she then produces a new creation (see Lévi-Strauss 19). Critics use a variety of formulations to describe this practice: a pasticheur can

“paste together linguistic units (actual or virtual) from various sources” (Ben-Porat 420), allude to or incorporate citations from other works (J. Ryan 398), mix codes and period signs detached from their original contexts (H. Foster 127), “collide” art-historical and pop-cultural references (H. Foster 131), create a patchwork of textual styles (Hoesterey, Pastiche 83), paste together the pieces of fragmented culture (Keller 226) or compile motifs from contemporary art as well as from earlier periods (Rose,

“Post-Modern Pastiche” 30). As is evident from these descrip-tions, critics perceive the materials, procedures and targets of compilation pastiche quite differently, although an element of compilation or mixing of disparate materials is central to them all.

While not an advocate of the compilation sense of pastiche, Richard Dyer nevertheless offers a helpful guideline when he

While not an advocate of the compilation sense of pastiche, Richard Dyer nevertheless offers a helpful guideline when he