Pastiche

The word pastiche describes a literary or other artistic genre. The word has two competing meanings, both discussed below.

Pastiche as hodge-podge

Pastiche is also used with a rather different meaning: a work is called pastiche if it was cobbled together in imitation of several original works. As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, a pastiche in this sense is "a medley of various ingredients; a hotchpotch, farrago, jumble." This meaning accords with etymology: pastiche is the French version of Italian pasticcio, which designated a kind of pie made of many different ingredients.

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In the 18th century, opera pasticcios were frequently made by composers as notable as George Frideric Handel, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Johann Christian Bach. These composite works would take various portions of scores by other composers and recombine them, changing words and adapting freely.

Related Topics:
Opera - George Frideric Handel - Gluck - Johann Christian Bach

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Some works of art are pastiche in both senses of the term; for example, the David Lodge novel and the Star Wars series mentioned above affectionately imitate work from multiple sources.

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