Author(s): Natalia Szechnicka, University of Wrocław, Poland
Journal: Polish Journal of English Studies
Issue: 11.1 (2025)
Date: 15/06/2025
Page: 34
Quote As: Natalia Szechnicka, A Recipe for Parody: Mark Crick’s “Clafoutis Grandmère à la Virginia Woolf” as a Pastiche and Parody of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Polish Journal of English Studies 11.1 (2025): 34-45
Abstract
This paper explores a parody of Virginia Woolf’s writing style featured in Kafka’s Soup by Mark Crick. The volume by Crick comprises a wide range of parodies, including “Clafoutis Grand-mère à la Virginia Woolf”, which, this paper strives to show, represents both a general parody of Woolf’s writing style and a specific parody of her novel To the Lighthouse. This paper also highlights the similarities between certain features of Woolf’s writing style and of the chiselled style of the late-Victorian, decadent-aestheticist writer Walter Pater – particularly the use of lengthy sentences divided by semicolons, stream-like writing with frequent subject changes, and the intertwining of the external events with the characters’ impressions. This connection between Woolf and Pater is underexplored in scholarly research. Crick’s Kafka’s Soup is also rarely discussed academically, save for occasional reviews. This paper explores the inspirations behind the book and demonstrates how Crick’s “recipe” functions as a literary pastiche. The recipe form is what makes Crick’s parody unique; hence, an overview of the inclusion of recipes in twentieth-century literature is here provided. Crick’s parodic rewrite of the British Modernist’s literary manner is discussed here not only with regard to the stylistic features but also with reference to the motifs typical to Woolf’s writing. Thus, while analysing “Clafoutis” as a specific parody of To the Lighthouse, this paper indicates specific themes from the novel – including the themes of the passage of time, of genteel sentiments, and of gender differences – which, too, find their comical reflection in Crick’s text.
Keywords: specific parody, pastiche, Virginia Woolf’s writing style, themes of To the Lighthouse, Mark Crick’s Kafka’s Soup
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© by the author, licensee Polish Journal of English Studies. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Received: 15.05.2025; reviewed 4.06.2025; accepted 9.06.2025