The Genre of Trolls - Doria

Hence, Johan Alén’s narrative demonstrates the intertextual constitution
of parody posited earlier in this chapter. Upon scrutiny, a finely wrought
web of intertextual allusions traverse the whole text, evoked by his carefully
selected phrases, but it is a sign of the sophistication of his craft that the
parodic intonation and many of the associations remain implicit in the narrative
until the last moment, when the listener, and the latter-day reader, is
obliged to review and reinterpret the text. The disturbing results of this reconsideration
is to some extent due to the intergenericity of the parody;
Alén superimposes what might be described as the code of the legend (the
parodying discourse) onto the conventions of the wonder tale (the parodied
discourse). This is why I proposed to view Alén’s narratives as similar to
mixed genres or genres linked to multiple sets of generic features.
Alén’s parodies may also be labelled metanarrational or metafictional,
since they comment on “the narrative itself and those elements by which it
is constituted and communicated” (Babcock-Abrahams 1976: 179–180). According
to Barbara Babcock-Abrahams, metanarration tends to focus on
the code, message or medium of communication and, as a form of metacommunication,
pertains especially to the relation between the narrator,
the audience and the narrative message (Babcock-Abrahams 1976: 179). All
of these are deeply implicated in the actualization of parody. Thus, in his
parodies, Alén reflects on the act of storytelling as it has been practised by
other narrators, and on the generic structure and composition of other texts
(cf. Rose 1993: 92), thereby linking his own rendition to previous tellings of
the stories. He criticizes the world portrayed in the wonder tale and the
narrators perpetuating it by transposing the generic ideal of social climbing
—prevalent in jocular tales as well—to an area where it does not belong,
namely to the illicit transgression of the strict boundary between the
supernatural and the human. He creates a forbidden liaison between the
domains, defying the prohibitions designed to separate them, and subverts
the marital ethic of the wonder tale. His violation of this generic feature
attracts our attention to it precisely as a convention or code, and it distorts
the message of the parodied text.
Similarly, Alén’s parodies are self-reflexive, as they are used to highlight
their own composition and audience too in the process of refunctioning the
anterior text (cf. Rose 1993: 91–92). Once again, the construction of genre
takes pride of place in the communication with the audience. In minimizing
the intertextual gaps for the larger part of the narrative, Alén raises the
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