Homage or ''hommage'' ( or ) is a show or demonstration of
respect or
dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic. The term is often used in
the arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
, where one author or artist shows respect to another by allusion or imitation; this is often spelled and pronounced like the original French ''hommage'' ().
Description
It was originally a
declaration of fealty in the
feudal system
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...
—swearing that one was the man (French: ''homme''), or subordinate, of the feudal lord. The concept then became used figuratively for an acknowledgement of quality or superiority. For example, a man might give homage to a lady, so honouring her beauty and other graces. In German scholarship, followers of a great scholar developed the custom of honouring their mentor by producing papers for a ''
festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
'' dedicated to him.
In music, homage can take the form of a composition (''
Homage to Paderewski
''Homage to Paderewski'' is an album of piano pieces by 17 composers, published in 1942 in honour of the Polish pianist, composer and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
Background
''Homage to Paderewski'' was commissioned by the music publisher B ...
''), a
tribute album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records c ...
(''
Homage to Charles Parker
''Homage to Charles Parker'' is an album by American jazz trombonist/composer George Lewis recorded in 1979 for the Italian Black Saint label. '') or a
sample
Sample or samples may refer to:
Base meaning
* Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set
* Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal
* Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...
. Digital techniques used to generate many forms of media make it easy to borrow from other works, and this
remediation may be used in homage to them.
See also
*
Allusion
Allusion is a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated (as ...
*
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>Hal ...
*
Pastiche
References
Cinematic techniques
Dedication
Intertextuality
Literary concepts
Narrative forms
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