IN DEFENSE OF PARODY . . .

"Leaving aside its immediate aim of making the reader laugh, parody - literary parody especially - has an infinitely wider remit. Pace F R Leavis, it is ultimately a form of literary criticism, where the judgements are arrived at by amplifying a writer's stylistic idiosyncrasies to the point where they collapse in a wounded heap."

From "In Defence of Parody," by D.J. Taylor in the Literary Review. Link from Arts & Letters Daily.