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Understanding Intertextuality

The document discusses several key concepts relating to intertextuality and how texts reference other texts. It states that according to Foucault, texts exist within networks and contexts established by other texts. Intratextuality refers to internal references within a single text, such as captions anchoring the meaning of photographs. Bricolage is the creative recombination of existing elements, seen in how literature draws upon intertextual references. The document then outlines various types of intertextuality and features that can characterize intertextual references between texts.

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Ninda Fitria
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66 views8 pages

Understanding Intertextuality

The document discusses several key concepts relating to intertextuality and how texts reference other texts. It states that according to Foucault, texts exist within networks and contexts established by other texts. Intratextuality refers to internal references within a single text, such as captions anchoring the meaning of photographs. Bricolage is the creative recombination of existing elements, seen in how literature draws upon intertextual references. The document then outlines various types of intertextuality and features that can characterize intertextual references between texts.

Uploaded by

Ninda Fitria
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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No Text is an Island

• Foucalt says that “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the
title, the first lines and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration
and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other
books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network . . . The
book is not simply the object that one holds in one’s hands . . . Its unity is
variable and relative.”

• Our understanding of any individual text relates to such framings. Texts


provide contexts within which other texts may be created and interpreted.

• Texts are framed in many ways. Our understanding of any individual text
relates to such framings. Texts provide contexts within which other texts
may be created and interpreted.
Example
INTRATEXTUALITY
• Intratextuality is a related kind of allusions of intertextuality. It is
involving internal relations within the text.

• Roland Barthes introduced the concept of anchorage (Barthes 1964,


38ff.). Linguistic elements can serve to ‘anchor’ (or constrain) the
preferred readings of an image: ‘to fix the floating chain of signifieds’
(ibid., 39).
Intratextuality
• For instance, ‘It is a very common practice for the captions to news
photographs to tell us, in words, exactly how the subject’s expression
ought to be read’ (Hall 1981, 229).
BRICOLAGE
• Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of the bricoleur who creates improvized
structures by appropriating pre-existing materials which are ready to
hand is now fairly well known within cultural studies.

• The bricoleur works with signs, constructing new arrangements by


adopting existing signifieds as signifiers and ‘speaking’ ‘through the
medium of things’ – by the choices made from ‘limited possibilities’
Bricolage
• In literature, bricolage is affected by intertextuality in the shaping of a
text’s meaning by reference to other texts.

• Levi-Strauss was interested in how societies create novel solutions by


using resources that already exist in the collective social
consciousness.

• Mythical thought, according to Levi-Strauss, attempts to re-use


available materials in order to solve new problems.
TYPES AND DEGREES OF INTERTEXTUALITY
1. Intertextuality: quotation, plagiarism, allusion
2. Paratextuality: the relation between a text and its ‘paratext’
3. Architextuality: designation of a text as part of a genre or
genres (Genette refers to designation by the text itself, but this
could also be applied to its framing by readers)
4. Metatextuality: explicit or implicit critical commentary of one
text on another text
5. Hypotextuality (Genette’s term was hypertextuality): the
relation between a text and a preceding ‘hypotext’
FEATURES OF INTERTEXTUALITY
1. Reflexivity: how reflexive (or self-conscious) the use of
intertextuality seems to be
2. Alteration: the alteration of sources
3. Explicitness: the specificity and explicitness of reference(s) to
other text(s)
4. Criticality to comprehension: how important it would be for the
reader to recognize the intertextuality involved;
5. Scale of adoption: the overall scale of allusion/incorporation
within the text
6. Structural unboundedness: to what extent the text is presented
(or understood) as part of or tied to a larger structure

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