Homage
Homage or hommage is a show of respect to someone or something.
It was originally a declaration of fealty in the feudal system - swearing that one was the man (French: homme) of the feaudal lord. The concept then became used figuratively for an acknowledgement of quality or superiority. For example, a man might pay homage to a lady, so honouring her beauty and other graces. In German scholarship, followers of a great scholar developed the custom of honoring their mentor by producing papers for a festschrift dedicated to him.
The concept now often appears in the arts where one author shows respect to a topic by calling it an homage, such as Homage to Catalonia. Alternatively, creative artists may show respect to a veteran of the field or to an admired practitioner by alluding to their work. In rock music this can take the form of a tribute album or of a sample. As of 2010 the digital techniques used to generate many forms of media make it easy to borrow from other works and this remediation may be used to pay homage to them.
Feudal homage
In a simple form, swearing homage or fealty exclusively to a single acknowledged superior could strengthen society on clear-cut hierarchical lines. But Bloch notes the effects of "doing homage to several lords, the true scourge of vassalage" as it developed in the 11th and 12th centuries in Europe.
Pastiche
In this usage, a work is called pastiche if it is cobbled together in imitation of several original works. As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, a pastiche in this sense is "a medley of various ingredients; a hotchpotch, farrago, jumble." This meaning accords with etymology: pastiche is the French version of the greco-Roman dish pastitsio or pasticcio, which designated a kind of pie made of many different ingredients.
Some works of art are pastiche in both senses of the term; for example, the David Lodge novel and the Star Wars series mentioned below appreciatively imitate work from multiple sources.
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