Parodies and retellings

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Retellings, recuperations, reclamations; reinterpretive works; intertextuality; derivative works.

These are works which reinterpret a previous story or concept. Commonly, reinterpretations of fairy tales, folktales, and myths; but reinterpretations of literary and media works have also become increasingly common over the past few years.

Retelling stories is a common way for critics to make a critical point about a work. The commentary might be humorous, as in a humorous parody; critical, as in a work that demonstrates the earlier work's failings of writing or perspective; or exploratory, as in a work that explores new dimensions and resonances of an early story.

Reinterpretations may be fiercely political, particularly in recapturing an alternative perspective or a hidden or minor character. For instance, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was recast from the point of view of Scarlett's enslaved black half-sister in The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall. Maguire's Wicked was told from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. In both instances, the authors sought to bring to the fore social and political issues that were present in the prior text, but glossed over, romanticized, or misrepresentative of history. Lolita was retold from the perspective of the young girl in Lo's Diary.

While the common sense of the word "parody" implies a light or humorous tale, in US copyright law, the term has come to mean a broader critical or humorous retelling; as in The Wind Done Gone, the retelling of Gone With the Wind from the perspective of Scarlett O'Hara's enslaved half-sister. In US copyright law, parodies are often distinguished from satires: parodies mock a work or works or type of work, while satires mock society.

Occasionally authors have revisited their own earlier works, with many of the same purposes that third-party authors have. Ursula K. Le Guin added a fourth book to her Earthsea trilogy years later, commenting that the earlier trilogy was like a chair with a leg missing. In Tehanu, Le Guin told the story of the grown-up Tenar, exposing the sexism inherent in the Earthsea society which she had herself, unthinkingly, set up.

Reinterpretations not formally published by be described as FanFic. Formally published reinterpretations have lately garnered extremely prestigious awards -- for instance, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, a retelling of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway won a Pulitzer Prize for Literature and was adapted into a film. Wicked and other recastings by Gregory Maguire have been widely acclaimed, and Wicked (a retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz) was made into a Broadway musical.

Random notes: To some extent all works include some reinterpretive aspect. They are retelling a historic event, or placing the same story (two people meet, fall in love, face problems, and have a tragic/happy ending) in some new setting. To some extent it might be argued that all retellings are reappropriations of myths, old or new; without a certain mythic status in a culture, there would be no point in retelling a work. However, it may also be that a work has resonance only for the reteller and reinterpreter. One could imagine the reinterpreted work becoming better-known than the original.

Types of retellings:

  • Switch a major character from one gender, ethnicity, or other significant identity characteristic to another
  • Tell the same story from the perspective of another character
  • Insert a new character(s)
  • Change some aspect of the plot or story
  • Change the setting of the story
  • Change the mode; e.g., from serious to humorous; from realistic to fantastic; from a straight story to a parody of that story; etc.
  • Rewrite, but add in new layers of meaning, themes, pull out subtext, put in subtext, etc.


  • Original creators revisiting; original creators authorizing third-party; New creators visiting
  • Canon / non-canon
  • Formally published / non-published fanfic


Examples

Examples are particularly common within science fiction and fantasy, but have also been common outside of SF.

  • Reworkings of major non-SF literary/media works (selective examples)
    • Gone With the Wind ... Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone
    • Lolita ... Lo's Diary
    • Jane Eyre ... The Wide Sargasso Sea
    • Beowulf / Grendel (novel) by John Gardner
    • Hamlet by Shakespeare & Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead / Stoppard (and many, many others about shakespeare stories)
    • Pamela Frankau, Jezebel (1937) (see Bibliography)
    • Gulliver's Travels, a parody of the travel genre, and a satire of English society
    • Nancy Clue and the Hardly Boys / Mabel Maney
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