looking from different perspectives

'Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.'
Vladimir Nabokov

What is parody? In literature, it is known as a form of satirical criticism or comic mockery that imitates the style and manner of a particular writer or school of writers so as to emphasize the weakness of the writer or the overused conventions of the school. Wikipedia on the other hand defines parody as a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, or author, by means of humorous or satiric imitation.

Ambrose Pierce's The Devil's Dictionary was written in literature pursuit to parody the conventions of dictionaries. It tries to redefined the words in the dictionaries, giving it a different perspactives. I found it rather refreshing, entertaining, and amusing. It makes us look and think about the things we often overlooked in our life in other ways. It shows us that we can change the conventions of life if we want to.

Classroom wise, I think this would be an interesting material to work with. Students would gladly approach the light hearted poking fun at conventions. To make it more accessible to them we may choose the parody of definition of things they like the most or hate the most or things familiar to them.

I would like to attach my own version of parody here.

Teacher, n

Is a kind of animal that resembles the cockatoo from the African continent. It has a habit of filling up buckets of minds with water of knowledge for its survival. However, this act proves time consuming as the buckets' fill keeps on receding, and without continual filling of water the bucket would be empty again or filled up with other things instead of the water of knowledge.