Information about Pastiche

The word pastiche describes a literary or other artistic genre. The word has two competing meanings, either meaning a "hodge-podge" or an imitation. Both meanings are discussed below.

History and usage

The "hodge-podge" meaning of the word came first, appearing in English in the late 19th century. Over the course of the 20th century, pastiche shifted in its meaning, so that now it can be used as described in the second section, without any necessary connotation of hodge-podge. However, some readers intuit the "hodge-podge" reading to be the dominant or even the only meaning. The variation almost certainly results from the fact that the word is fairly rare — most readers acquire their sense of the word from just a few examples. The word is routinely used by advocates of modern architectural styles to disparage new architecture which reflects traditional styles, the mere invocation of the word often being considered sufficient to condemn a design as unworthy of further consideration. In light of the ongoing semantic drift, it would seem that writers should use the word with caution.

Pastiche as hodge-podge

In this usage, a work is called pastiche if it is cobbled together in imitation of several original works. As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, a pastiche in this sense is "a medley of various ingredients; a hotchpotch, farrago, jumble." This meaning accords with etymology: pastiche is the French version of greco-Roman dish pasticcio, which designated a kind of pie made of many different ingredients.

In the 18th century, opera pasticcios were frequently made by composers as notable as George Frideric Handel (e.g. Giove in Argo), Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Johann Christian Bach. These composite works would consist mainly of portions of other composers' work, although they could also include original composition. The portions borrowed from other composers would be more or less freely adapted, especially in the case of arias in pasticcio operas by substituting a new text for the original one.

Although there were many opera pasticcios in the 18th century, instrumental works would also sometimes be assembled from pre-existing compositions, a notable instance of this being the first four piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. These concertos (K. 37, 39-41) were assembled almost entirely from keyboard sonata movements by contemporary composers, to which the boy Mozart added orchestral parts supporting the keyboard soloist.

Some works of art are pastiche in both senses of the term; for example, the David Lodge novel and the Star Wars series mentioned below appreciatively imitate work from multiple sources.

Pastiche mass

A pastiche mass is a mass where the constituent movements are from different Mass settings.

Masses are composed by classical composers as a set of movements. Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei vis: Missa Sollenelle of Beethoven, the Notre Dame mass of Machaut. In a pastiche mass, the performers may choose a Kyrie from one composer, and a Gloria from another - or, choose a Kyrie from one setting of an individual composer, and a Gloria from another.

Most often this convention is chosen for concert performances, particularly by early music ensembles.

Pastiche as imitation

In this usage, the term denotes a literary technique employing a generally light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of another's style; although jocular, it is usually respectful.

For example, many stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, originally created by Arthur Conan Doyle, have been written as pastiches since the author's time. David Lodge's novel The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965) is a pastiche of works by Joyce, Kafka, and Virginia Woolf. Much fan fiction is pastiche.

Pastiche is also found in non-literary works, including art and music. For instance, Charles Rosen has characterized Mozart's various works in imitation of Baroque style as pastiche, and Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite was written as a conscious homage to the music of an earlier age. Many of "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs are pastiches: for example, "Dare to Be Stupid" is a Devo pastiche, and "Bob" from the album Poodle Hat is a pastiche of Bob Dylan. "Bohemian Rhapsody", by Queen is unusual as it is a pastiche in both senses of the word, as there are many distinct styles imitated in the song, all 'hodge-podged' together to create one piece of music.

Pastiche is prominent in popular culture. Many genre writings, particularly in fantasy, are essentially pastiches. The Star Wars series of films by George Lucas is often considered to be a pastiche of traditional science fiction television serials (or radio shows). The fact that Lucas's films have been influential (spawning their own pastiches - vis the 1983 3D film ) can be regarded as a function of postmodernity.

The films of Quentin Tarantino are often described as pastiches, as they often pay tribute to (or imitate) pulp novels, blaxploitation and/or Chinese kung fu films, though some say his films are more of an homage. The same definition is said to apply to Hideo Kojima as well.

Pastiche can also be a cinematic device wherein the creator of the film pays homage to another filmmaker's style and use of cinematography, including camera angles, lighting, and mise en scène. A film's writer may also offer a pastiche based on the works of other writers (this is especially evident in historical films and documentaries but can be found in non-fiction drama, comedy and horror films as well).

Well-known academic Fredric Jameson has a somewhat more critical view of pastiche, describing it as "blank parody" (Jameson, 1991), especially with reference to the postmodern parodic practices of self-reflexivity and intertextuality. By this is meant that rather than being a jocular but still respectful imitation of another style, pastiche in the postmodern era has become a "dead language", without any political or historical content, and so has also become unable to satirize in any effective way. Whereas pastiche used to be a humorous literary style, it has, in postmodernism, become "devoid of laughter" (Jameson, 1991).

Pastiche as continuation

Among some Conan the Barbarian fans, the term Pastiche is used to describe posthumous follow-ups to the Robert E. Howard stories, written by other writers without Howard's authorization. This includes the Conan stories of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, who laid the Conan stories out in a chronology counter to the stated approach of Howard himself, and also saw fit to actually revise Howard's original tales to satisfy their own preferences.

In "The Languages of Pao"

In the science fiction novel "The Languages of Pao" by Jack Vance, an experiment in social engineering - the creation of three artificial languages, each spoken by a specially-brought up social caste - goes in an unexpected direction when the young people on their own create a fourth language named "Pastiche", made up of words and grammatical rules taken at random from the three planned ones and from their original tongue.

See also

• Parody
• Fan fiction
• Doujinshi
• Homage
• Archetype

Further reading

• Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
• "Pasticcio" in Don Michael Randel, ed., The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: Bellnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986 (ISBN 0-674-61525-5), p. 614.