intertextuality

English

Etymology

From French intertextualité.

Noun

intertextuality (countable and uncountable, plural intertextualities)

1. The idea that a given text is a response to what has already been written, be it explicit or implicit.

   When one studies the intertextuality of "Hamlet", one realises that William Shakespeare must have read thousands of books.

   • 1988, Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge, →ISBN:

     All of these issues—subjectivity, intertextuality, reference, ideology—underlie the problematized relations between history and fiction in postmodernism.

   • 2017, Aleksander Rzyman, The Intertextuality of Terry Pratchett's Discworld as a Major Challenge for the Translator, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 11:

     From the translator's point of view, therefore, both types of intertextuality—or simply all kinds of intertextuality—are important, since the translator, ideally, ought not to deprive the reader of even a smallest chunk of the intertextual load of the original.

2. The reference to another separate and distinct text within a text.

Translations

the idea that a given text is a response to what has already been written

• French: intertextualité (fr) f
• German: Intertextualität (de) f
• Spanish: intertextualidad f

references among texts

• Danish: intertekstualitet c

Further reading

• intertextuality on Wikipedia.Wikipedia