Definition of a Pastiche in the A2SL English Packet: the imitation or re-creation of an already published work.

Pastiche is an artistic genre. Although we are currently focusing on it as a literary genre, it can also be a music, or visual art genre. Note that when writing a Pastiche, the process of imitation and recreation of the published work of the original writer does not intend to violate the copyright of the original writer, but to explore the effects of stylistic variation upon a previously established prose or poetry. Through this process, a writer can create a new piece where the language works similarly to the original work but involves a new style of writing, sometimes even leading to an original story or poem.

Why write pastiches?

The object of a pastiche is not to borrow externals and write a pale imitation of the original but to learn from the author. Writing pastiches gives you a practical system for doing that, and it can be fun, too.

One might ask - how would a piece of work created based on another be original?

Below are somemajor stylistic variations that a writer usually takes to create a pastiche from the original work: 

• Plot: Take a plot of the story and take the outline. For example, choronogically - the weather changes, a relationship breaks, a marriage etc. Then, change the plot's outline from tragedy to comedy, or vice versa. 
    

• Setting: Change the setting of a story. This is referring to the environment, including the physical environment and the social environment. For example, changing a story which takes place in a big city to a small town, or a forest or village etc. The time can also be changed, from past to present, or present to future. It is likely that the setting has to be changed to fit the change in time.

    

• Character: Change the gender of a character. Turn a hero into a villain making fewest changes. These changes lead to certain changes in the story, for example their actions and dialogues. Ultimately, the message that is carried by their image would be altered. Therefore, the message that the writer wants to convey through his pastiche affects the way in how he changes the character and other literary aspects.

    

• Point of view: Rewrite a story from a different point of view with the same tone, diction, and similar plot, setting etc. A different point of view often allows the writer to reveal new things that readers cannot see from the original work.

    

• Dialogue: The change of dialogue is often a result in the change of setting or character. The change in character and setting would mean that the characters speak differently as they might come from different backgrounds like culture and social class.

   

   

There are two types of Pastiches﹕

1. Hodge-Podge - In this usage, the pastiche is an imitation from more than one original piece of writing. Writing techniques and literary features are taken from different established works and modified to form a new piece of writing.
2. Imitation - In this usage, the pastiche is an imitation of the writing of just one author, one original piece of writing.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche

Pastiche can be created from different forms of writing:

Pastiche allows a great flexibility for a writer. A writer can create a pastiche of different forms of writing, basically most literary forms like:

- Poetry

- Short stories

- Novel (or a section of the novel)

- Play (or a section of the play)

Moreover, as explained above, pastiches are not limited to literary works. A musician might create a hodge-podge pastiche by imitating the features of Mozart, Beethoven, and Handels' music at the same time. Then a piece of music pastiche would be created.

As we can see, a pastiche is characterized by the way it is created -  through imitation of an original work to create a new piece of artistic work. In this case however, we are only focusing on literary pastiches. However, this tells us what great flexibility a writer has when creating a pastiche. He can take features like using thousands of idioms from one original work, and using large amount of descriptive language from a second piece of established work to create his own story. He might create his own poem describing nature imitating a poem which describes a metropolitan city, or he might have an inspiration to create a new tragic short story based on the imitation of the plot of a fairytale-like short story he has just read.

EXAMPLE of a pastiche

First paragraph from Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" (Short Story)

This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-law’s. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.

First paragraph from "Weapons" - a Pastiche of "Cathedral"

This man with only one leg, an old patient of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. He called my wife from his parents’ in California. Arrangements were made. He would come by bus, and my wife would meet him at the bus stop. She hadn’t seen him since the Vietnam War 20 years ago. But they had kept in touch with the numerous letters and phone calls. I wasn’t so passionate about meeting this man. My idea came from the movies, that soldiers who survived but are disabled from wars were never the ones willing to sacrifice for their country.

For the phrases highlighted in color, notice the similarity in the use of language (including tone and diction), and how the pastiche's writer has modified the original phrase for the new story "Weapon".

The colored phrases are only a few out of all which significantly shows how the writer of the pastiche has imitated the language used by Raymond Carver in his short story "Cathedral". In the case of these 2 pieces of writing, they share a similar theme, "Cathedral" conveying the message that one should not discriminate blind people if they have not experienced blindness themselves, while "Weapons" conveys the message that one should not critize injured soldiers from war of being not brave enough to sacrifice their lives when one has not been in war. In this example, we can specifically see how imitating the language of an established work of an experienced author helps a writer to create a piece that uses similar effective language in conveying a similar theme.