Being situated on the boundary between form and content— fiction and facts, the story of The Enchantress of Florence plays with those dichotomous ideals in the form of parody. Parody corresponds to Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism because this literary device includes multi-voicedness and act of hybridization. According to Phiddian, “[a] complex parody can involve not just a particular aesthetic object, but many kinds of discourse within its own structure” (683). The Enchantress of
Florence is therefore a postmodern parody, for this novel transgresses the authority within the authoritative discourse (history) and it presents an incomplete space that gives access to the contemporary intentions. In The Enchantress of Florence, the story presents the dialogic relations by form—incorporated genres, and by including
multiple voices—concealing another’s speech in the present speech. What is more, this novel conveys the dialogic space between two opposing sides—the space
between fiction and fact, between authority and subversion and between creator and creation.
The parodic form, dialogic value and postmodernist concept enter the story of The Enchantress of Florence also in a dialogic relation. The dialogic discourse carried out by parody inevitably resonates within the postmodernist realm. The complexity of parody lies in its juggling of different intentions, or discourses—“A complex parody can involve not just a particular aesthetic object, but many kinds of discourse within its own structure” (Phiddian 683). Robert Phiddian points out that the essence of parody is the relations between those incorporated texts: “[the meaning of parody] is a matter of relation and constant cross-reference between the parody and its model” (684). Correspondingly, postmodernism operates in the form of parody:
“[p]ostmodern discourse […] not only entangles primary level discourse with
secondary or meta-level discourse but it also confounds description with prescription”
(Crapanzano 435). The first part of Crapanzaon’s description of postmodernism conveys postmodernism’s tendency to incorporate other discourses while the second half shows its confusing nature: one cannot reject nor accept postmodernist
prescription to reality (435). Approaching The Enchantress of Florence through the lens of postmodernism makes apparent the various forms of interactions, allowing all aspects to mingle all at once without resorting to a single meta-narrative.
As Hutcheon points out, to stress on the worldly nature of parody, one needs to redefine parody and delimit parody from the conventional conception. Parody is traditionally perceived as a kind of mockery, an act to ridicule. As parody’s
etymological origin informs us, parody’s prefix “para” in Latin means both “counter”
and “against,” and “odos” means song (Hutcheon 32). Parody is thus generally considered to be a form of imitation intended to tease or insult. However, Hutcheon
finds a more neutral definition of parody from Samuel Johnson and Susan Stewart which states that parody means changing the original idea for the new purpose or replacing the original elements with the new ones to have “an inverse or incongruous relation to the borrowed text” (qtd. in Hutcheon 36). Conclusively, Hutcheon defines parody as repetition with difference, and “imitation with critical ironic distance”
(37).
Yet, parody can be confused with quotation, pastiche or satire. Unlike quotation or citation that is “a matter of nostalgic imitation of past models” and borrows the authority of the primary text or speech to suit their needs, parody confronts formality, recodes and “establishes difference at the heart of similarity” (Hutcheon 8). Judging by their forms, quotation and parody share similar aspects such as their invitation of the authoritative voices, but parody departs from quotation by its tendency to alter the original meaning, in the disguise of mere imitation. Likewise, pastiche seeks to imitate but parody attempts to transform. In this case, parody is more flexible with adaptations whereas pastiche needs to stay in the same genre as its model (Hutcheon 38). According to Hutcheon, parody differs from satire because parody is intramural while satire is extramural—“social, moral” (44). On top of that, parodied texts are not always negative as satirized texts. Yet, parody can be extramural and therefore satiric;
satire, on the other hand, is not necessary parodic.
All in all, parody is both historical and social. Parody is the synthesis of the past and present texts as well as value judgments, both “a personal act of supersession and an inscription of literary-historical continuity,” and both a critique and imitation (Hutcheon 35). Moreover, this transformative potential makes parody a worldly text because it adapts to the social context and the present interests.
Parody and dialogism meet at the ground of referentiality. According to Hutcheon, “Postmodernist metafiction’s parody and the ironic rhetorical strategies that it deploys are perhaps the clearest modern examples of the Bakhtinian
‘double-voiced’ word” (72). Namely, double-voicedness occurs in the “reported speech,” that reprocess the past speeches and that is absolutely referential—“as discourse within and about discourse” (Hutcheon 72). Parody engages with the past in dialogic discourse.
In The Enchantress of Florence, the parodic frame continues and reactivates history; the recorded Florence and the Mughal Empire and their people are at once
“re-presented” and reappropriated. This ambivalent relationship between The
Enchantress of Florence and its model of history is set off from its dialogic discourse in which hybridized relations exist. Incorporated genres and literary allusions are both manifestations of the referentiality of dialogism. In addition, the dialogic concept exists within The Enchantress of Florence’s parodic structure, which intensifies the interactions and relationships among the author, the character and the reader. In the end, this circulated power—that each refers to the other displays that power
relationship can be inverted, even the one between the real and unreal.