Intertextuality

The term //intertextuality// was originally invented by the French poststructuralist theoretician Julia Kristeva in 1966 in order to capture the often complex ineterrelatedness of texts in a variety of ways from thematic to structural connections. As such, Kristeva conceived of the text "as a mosaic of quotations" and noted that "any text is an absorption and transformation of another" (66). In effect, any text becomes an amalgamation and reflection of other texts since one could discern the various manifestations and traces of other texts as quotations, paraphrases, allusions, symbols, images, themes, motifs, and archetypes in a given text.

Kristeva's conception of Intertextuality seems to have been influenced by the seminal theories of Ferdinand De Saussure as well as the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. In addition to postulating a reciprocal relation between the signifier and the signified, Saussure noted the differential nature of linguistic signs as well as their arbitrary nature in relation to what they pertain to. Moreover, Saussure elucidated the "vast network of relations, of similarity and difference, which constitutes the synchronic system of language." (Allen 11) Thus, one can argue that the same system applies to (literary) texts from which authors often select and utilize such elements as plot, character, theme, symbol, image, narratology and so forth. Add to this Saussaurian system of relational and differential elements the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglosia and dialogism as well as his embedding of language within its socio-cultural and ideational milieu and we will end up with Kristeva's concept of intertextuality in which there is constant relations between the various texts. Consequently, the text becomes a dialogic site of interrelated texts. These interrelations could be explicit as in quotations and paraphrases or implicit as in abstruse allusions and other thematic and conceptual relations.

Intertextuality can be approached from both a writerly/productive perspective as well as a readerly/receptive angle. From the former vantage point, the author is viewed as a reader/writer who draws on her/his conscious and subconscious knowledge of various texts to put together a text at any given time; thus generating a mosiac of already existing texts in a new configuration and format rather than creating it from scratch. From the latter (readerly) perspective, the reader's interpretation of a text relates to her/his familiarity with the specific genre and the expectations that it invokes in the reader's mind as well as the reader's prior knowledge of the germane themes, motifs, images, and characters that may shed light on the text under consideration. A famous example of how intertextuality operates in literary texts would be James Joyce's //Ullyses// whose main elements such as plot and characterization simultaneously parallel and yet contrast with their classical predecessors in Homer's Odyssey.

In recent years, a number of scholars in composition and reading have incorporated the notion of intertextuality into classroom instruction by highlighting intertextual relations among texts and requiring students to trace these textual relations and synthesize them into their assignments and papers.

References:

Allen, Graham. //Intertextuality.// New York: Routledge, 2000, print.

Armstrong, Sonya L. and Mary Newman. "Teaching Textual Conversations: Intertextuality in the College Reading Classroom. //Journal of College Reading & Learning//; Spring 2001,

Vol. 41, Issue 2, 6 -21.

Kristeva, Julia. //Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art.// Ed. Leon S. Roudiez. Trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, print.

Related terms: dialogic, genre, heteroglossia