Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the central idea in literary theory. Every text has its sense; in attachment to other text and the relation between signs, text and cultural text, the connection between a textbook and the literary system, or the transformative link between one to another wording are the examples of intertextuality. That’s why reading becomes a procedure of moving between different contents. In the same way, meaning turns out to be something which exists between vocabulary, paragraphs and passages and all the texts to which it refers and recounts, by moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations and then only the same text develops into the intertext for the rest.

 From the ancient time, there has been the use of references.  Greek philosophers like Plato in theory of Imitation, claimed the reproduction as the base of poetry, whereas his disciple Aristotle defined duplication as the necessary aspect of the learning, so both of them believe in the relative nature of the texts. Likewise, Structuralist like Ferdinand Saussure in his theory of Semiology defined relational nature of signifiers and signified while highlighting the significance of this aspect in human world.

          Roland Barthes in his theory of the death of the author discusses about this very notion of intertextuality. For him, work’s intertextuality leads to new textual relations.As a result ,the connotation of the text is not limited to author only that’s why truth and meaning are always plural and relative and their relationality also resist to the earlier notions of originality, uniqueness, singularity and autonomy. His deployment of intertextuality, celebration of plurality and the freedom from the constraint of all readers is characteristically poststructuralist.

 To illustrate,he quotes a line from Balzac’s short story Sarrasine in which we find the description of a ‘catastrophe disguised as a woman’when he says, ‘This was the woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, and her instinctive worries’. Balzac depicts the connection between various discourses like the universal wisdom, romantic psychology, literary conventions regarding woman without implementing own authorial voice. This example depicts the presence of the open-endedness, plurality of meaning in any text.  Harold Bloom in this theory of Anxiety of Influence relates father poets and young poets and later theorists like feminist and so, the interconnectedness between the texts and poets of different era is instant of intertextuality.

Feminist Kriesteva writes, a text is permutation of texts, and intertextuality in a space given text, in which several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect, neutralize one another. So ,every text consists double implication, which are inside and outside ,social and historical .For example, Mary Shelly’s The Last Man (1826),contains the sentence, ‘ England ,seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship ,which mastered the winds and rude proudly over the waves. ’The sentence depicts the scenario of 19th century’ England where plague may be reason of destruction of England in future, although it is mere an imagination about future, but the above sentence truly represents the then ideology, discourses.

In postmodern era, this concept of intertextuality has been associated with the idea of pastiche, imitation and the mixing of already established styles and practices, such as texts of Shakespeare, Jane Austen. Moreover, painting in contemporary period uses images of classical paintings, and contemporary literature seems more concerned with echoing and playing with previous stories, classic texts and long established genres such as romance and detective story.

Hence, Intertextuality seems such as a valuable term because it foregrounds notions of relationally, interconnectedness and interdependence in modern cultural life. In the postmodern epoch, theorists claim, it is not possible any longer to speak of originality or the uniqueness of the artistic object, be it a painting or a novel, since uniqueness of the artistic object, be it a painting or a novel, since every artistic object is so clearly assembled from bits and pieces of every already existent art. Intertextuality, as a term, stands at the centre of such cotemporary conceptions of art and cultural productions generally.

Although there are variety of definitions of intertextuality,but the very tem tell again same thing that all texts are open-ended, reversible, and consists various polar of meanings, ideologies, voices .Even the articles in newspapers ,websites, programs run in various channels, and other advertisements are the examples of intertext because they are associated to each other due to same system of every language, which is basically arbitrary.

To conclude, intertextuality is the major concern in the field of literary theory and its significance cannot be ignored even in new wording.