Intertextuality

How it is used

Term introduced by Julia Kristeva in the late 1960s. Classic examples are Joyce's Ulysses, which reworks Homer's Odyssey, and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which retells the story of the first wife in Jane Eyre. Adjective: intertextual.

Example sentences

1. The novel's intertextuality with One Thousand and One Nights is clear from the first chapter.

2. Intertextuality is a key feature of postmodern fiction.

Common collocations

• intertextual references
• intertextual reading
• a high degree of intertextuality

Related terms

• allusionA brief, indirect reference to a well-known person, place, event or text, such as the Bible, Greek myth or Shakespeare, that the writer expects readers to recognize.
• PostmodernismA movement in literature after the Second World War that plays with form and questions truth, often through irony, parody, mixing genres and fiction that comments on itself.
• literary theoryThe study of the ideas and methods used to read and interpret literature, such as structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and postcolonial theory.
• canonThe group of works generally accepted as the most important and influential in a literature, which are widely taught, studied and reprinted.

More terms: Criticism and Analysis

• literary criticism
• interpretation
• literary analysis
• close reading
• feminist criticism