This thesis constitutes the first study of G.K. Chesterton’s status as a theorist and practitioner of parody. Employing a combination of original archival research, historical contextualisation, theoretical analysis, and textual close reading, I demonstrate that an extensive range of parodic strategies permeate Chesterton’s diverse output, from his detective fiction, to his nonsense verse, journalism, novels, and critical essays. I particularly focus upon elaborating the affinity of Chesterton’s work with the literary and cultural theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, in relation to the latter’s principle of dialogism, and his account of the parodic basis of the carnivalesque. In this context, I interpret The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and Father Brown (1910-1936) as archetypal dialogic and carnivalesque texts. Reading Chesterton in this way not only produces a unified framework through which to understand his aesthetic method, but also enables a far-reaching reassessment of his relationship to aesthetic programmes that he opposed. In particular, I discuss his parodic engagement with the ascendant tropes of literary modernism, employing archival research into his youthful friendship with E.C. Bentley and close textual analysis of his later relationship to T.S. Eliot to trace the chronology of Chesterton’s interaction with diverse voices of cultural modernity. In pursuing this analysis, I use the simultaneous inscription of similarity and difference encoded within the parodic act as a means of questioning compartmentalising approaches to genre and literary history which militate against accurate valuation of essentially dialogic thinkers such as Chesterton. In this way, I apply Chesterton’s work as an exemplary model through which to develop a more comprehensive theory of the culturally disruptive operation of literary dialogism.

L’objet de ce travail est de montrer le rôle capital qu’a joué la parodie dans la construction du genre romanesque, le seul de ce que l’on considère aujourd’hui comme les grands genres à ne pas être théorisé jusqu’à la fin du XVIIe siècle. La parodie est considérée comme une pratique facile et gratuite, comme une attaque déloyale visant à détruire sans pitié un modèle supérieur. Pourtant, on peut plaider en faveur de son pouvoir habilement corrosif et régénérateur : en critiquant une esthétique, elle en dénonce les défauts et invite à la renouveler. Tournée vers le passé du texte qu’elle imite, elle est aussi tournée vers l’avenir et porte en germe, dans sa critique, la suggestion de voies de renouvellement. Cette capacité de la parodie de régénérer par-delà la critique explique que le roman, en l’absence de théorisation, se soit largement défini par la parodie. Son rôle a, de ce fait, été crucial aux époques où le roman n’était ni théorisé ni accepté et elle a constitué un des lieux majeurs de la réflexion sur le genre romanesque. Non seulement la parodie bouscule le genre du roman et, par ce geste même, le constitue comme genre, mais elle permet aussi de mettre en évidence la conscience générique d’une époque et les formes qu’elle adoptait. Œuvre de lecteur, elle reflète la vision qu’a eue une époque du roman et les manières dont elle entendait le renouveler : elle est donc doublement théoricienne. Il s’agit ici de voir comment la parodie, du roman grec au roman du XVIIIe siècle a été le laboratoire du genre romanesque, situé dans un fragile équilibre entre la destruction des esthétiques qui l’ont précédé et la promotion de nouvelles formules. / The aim of this dissertation is to show the decisive role that parody played in the construction of the novel as a genre, that has not been theorized before the end of the XVIIth century (a unique case within the main forms of literatures). Parody is often considered as an easy process, an unfair and merciless way to attack a superior model. However, its defenders can valuably argue for its caustic and regenerative impact : by criticizing the novel’s aesthetic, parody points out its weaknesses and thus shows the way to renew it. By the process of imitation, parody inevitably confines the parodied text into the past; but at the same time it looks towards the future and suggests, in its criticism itself, new territories to explore. This fertile feature of parody explains why it has largely helped to define the novel in the absence of theoricians. At times when the novel was neither theorized, nor even accepted, parody has played a crucial role, concentrating most of the intellectual reflection about the novel. Not only has parody shaken the form of the novel – which by the way helped establishing it as a genre, it has also highlighted how conscious people were of the existence of this genre, the forms it took. Being a reader’s work, parody reflects how an audience considered the novel and how it intended to renew it : in that sense it has a double contribution to theory. Our objective is to see how, from the greek novel to the XVIIIth century, parody has been a think tank for the novel, in a fragile balance between the destruction of former aesthetics and the promotion of new formulas.