ABSTRACT
Generic forms gain their authority in retrospect: they establish themselves initially by a process of selective assemblage that can only be properly described as parody. Emma seems so natural a title and focus that we forget Robinson Crusoe had, to establish the primacy of individual identity as a discursive domain, to hijack maritime narrative. The private-eye story now seems so automatic it even narrativizes television advertisements, but it realized faux-naif urban consciousness by implanting sensitive confessional viewpoint into the brutal dime novel. Both instances are striking parodic hybrids that proved contextually highly credible. This would not surprise the Russian formalists: both Šklovskij and Tynjanov describe how parody is a mechanism for both formal development and political expression.1
