[HPforGrownups] Song

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 4962


----- Original Message -----
From: "Amanda Lewanski" <editor at texas.net>
To: <HPforGrownups at egroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: [HPforGrownups] Song


> Hey, list gods, why don't you make a separate section of the eGroups site
for
> filk songs? (for those who don't know this term, a filk is a song that
puts new
> words, usually spoof words, to familiar tunes). We're starting to amass
quite a
> sterling collection.


The literary critic Dwight MacDonald, in his appendix to Parodies: An
Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm - and After (1960) - a volume that has
for years stood upon my special bedside shelf - used the term "burlesque" in
a manner synonymous with your use of "filk" - "Burlesque is a more advanced
form [than Travesty] since it at least imitates the style of the original.
It differs from parody in that the writer is concerned with the original not
in itself but as a device for topical humor...[as opposed to] parody [which]
concentrates on the style and the thought of the original. If burlesque is
like pouring old wine into new bottles, parody is making a new wine which
tastes like the old but has a slightly lethal effect." (p. 558-559).

    - CMC (aka ray of sunshine)