The article discusses 79 Russian parodies of the 19th century, the title or the subtitle of which implies the fragmentarity. A parody is a specific form of the literary criticism hypertrophying the particular features of the original. A parody casts light upon the sources of the ”fragment” genre (the term is used as an equivalent of the Russian ”otryvok”): romantic aesthetic ideas, as well as the genres of drama, poem, epistle and elegy. Parodists imitate the genre-forming features of a fragment, its dominant motives, metrical and strophical interests and the tendency to innovation. Pervading all the levels of the fragment, the parody hypertrophies its genre features, thus facilitating the study of this non-canonical genre.
