Monday, April 17, 2017

Word of the Day: “anti-parody”


A sterling literary-historian and lay theologian  writes:

The excellent lyric ‘All my lufe leif me not’ … belongs to a large class [of] ‘anti-parodies’ (if I may coin a most necessary word):  the conversion of popular and secular songs  to devout purposes.
-- C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1944), p. 112

To the man on the Clapham omnibus, this coinage  may not seem “most necessary”;  you require long schooling to harmonize with that need. 

The notion of anti-parody is in line with Lewis’s special use of baptize, whereby a natural (pagan) trait, such as love of nature  or appreciation for music, may be said to be “baptized”  once such feelings are viewed on a higher plane, from a Christian perspective.

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