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Martin Intertextuality - An Introduction

This document provides an introduction and overview of the concept of intertextuality. It begins by discussing the origins of the term as coined by Julia Kristeva in the 1960s, combining ideas from Bakhtin and Saussure. It then briefly outlines the history and evolving definitions of intertextuality, its associations with postmodernism, and its applications beyond literary texts. The remainder of the document previews four essays that were presented together exploring various manifestations and theoretical aspects of intertextuality through analyses of specific works, including the relationship between text and images in Orhan Pamuk's memoir, an ekphrastic poem responding to a painting and commentary on it, the evolution of the graphic novel genre, and a close reading

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80 views5 pages

Martin Intertextuality - An Introduction

This document provides an introduction and overview of the concept of intertextuality. It begins by discussing the origins of the term as coined by Julia Kristeva in the 1960s, combining ideas from Bakhtin and Saussure. It then briefly outlines the history and evolving definitions of intertextuality, its associations with postmodernism, and its applications beyond literary texts. The remainder of the document previews four essays that were presented together exploring various manifestations and theoretical aspects of intertextuality through analyses of specific works, including the relationship between text and images in Orhan Pamuk's memoir, an ekphrastic poem responding to a painting and commentary on it, the evolution of the graphic novel genre, and a close reading

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Intertextuality: An Introduction

Elaine Martin

The Comparatist, Volume 35, May 2011, pp. 148-151 (Article)

Published by The University of North Carolina Press


DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/com.2011.0001

For additional information about this article


https://muse.jhu.edu/article/441246

[ Access provided at 24 May 2023 17:37 GMT from University of South Africa ]
Elaine Martin

Intertextuality
An Introduction



Intertextuality, which has occasionally been used somewhat blithely to designate


interdisciplinary and comparative investigations of various sorts, may, in its theo-
rization and historicization, not be blithe at all. That is, we may not agree on its
meaning. Most critics agree that the term was coined in the late 1960s by Julia
Kristeva, who combined ideas from Bakhtin on the social context of language with
Saussure’s positing of the systematic features of language.1 Kristeva’s definition, in
her essay “Word, Dialogue and Novel,” reads: intertextuality is “a mosaic of quo-
tations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of
intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read as at
least double” (Kristeva 85, cited in Moi 37).2 Kristeva’s work on intertextuality in the
late sixties coincided with the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism.
Graham Allen describes this move as “one in which assertions of objectivity, sci-
entific rigour, methodological stability and other highly rationalistic-­sounding
terms are replaced by an emphasis on uncertainty, indeterminacy, incommunica-
bility, subjectivity, desire, pleasure and play” (3). This uncertainty undercut autho-
rial intention and allowed Roland Barthes to proclaim the liberation of the reader
‘from the traditional power and authority of the figure of the ‘author,’ who was now
‘dead’” (Allen 4). The foregoing constitutes a seriously abbreviated history of the
term intertextuality, but the bottom line is its current association with postmod-
ernism, which in turn, is associated with “pastiches, imitation and the mixing of
already established styles and practices” (Allen 5). Intertextuality gains definitional
specificity by comparison with “other globalizing and rival terms for cultural re-
cycling such as ‘interdiscursivity,’ ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘hypertext’” (Orr 7). Also
potentially in the mix is the term intermediality, which leapfrogs altogether the
necessity of a text—explicit or implicit—a characteristic that separates it clearly
from intertextuality. Graham Allen writes that “[i]ntertextuality seems such a
useful term because it foregrounds notions of relationality, interconnectedness and
interdependence in modern cultural life” (5). Mary Orr adds: “By highlighting un-
voiced modes of intertextual work in other guises—paraphrase, formulaic expres-
sion, variant, recontextualization, translation—various tacit critical agendas behind
intertextuality’s representations become visible. Among intertextuality’s most prac-

148
tical functions is (re-­) evaluation by means of comparison, counter-­position and
contrast” (7). The “tacit critical agendas,” to which Orr refers, would include a chal-
lenge to the cultural hegemony of originality or uniqueness over reproduction/
copy (Allen 6). Finally, intertextuality has been appropriated and adapted by non-­
literary art forms so that it is not—despite the embedded word “text”—exclusively
related to works of literature or other written texts, including virtual texts. And it
has a critical function: intertextuality, like influence or imitation, is not neutral and
thus hints at its underlying socio-­political importance.
The essays grouped together here were originally presented in a seminar at the
2010 ACLA meeting in New Orleans entitled “Intertextualities: Text, Image, and
Beyond.” The seminar had a dual focus: an exploration of the various manifesta-
tions of intertextuality along a continuum ranging from influence to plagiarism
and equally a theoretical investigation of the continuum itself. The interests rep-
resented in these essays are widely varied and include the interplay of a text and
(seemingly unrelated) photos; an ekphrastic commentary on a painting, both of
which are treated in a poem; an overview of iconoclastic tendencies in the graphic
novel; and a close reading of an innovative graphic novel, which, at first glance,
seems highly unsuited thematically to the genre.
Following a discussion of photography’s status in the world of art as a whole,
Santesso focuses specifically on the interrelationship of text (pseudo-­memoir and
Künstlerroman) and black-­and-­white photographs (of Istanbul) in Orhan Pamuk’s
Istanbul: Memories and the City (English transl. 2005). Pamuk’s work contests the
idea of photographs as complements to literary texts, since the images seem, at first
glance, to have little connection to the narrative. Pamuk’s idiosyncratic interpre-
tations of the photos reveal a subjective metatext hovering between the two nar-
ratives, that of the images and that of the text. Santesso cites Barthes’s idea of the
punctum in an image, which is “an accident which pricks me (but also bruises me,
poignant to me)” to explain Pamuk’s engagement with the photos. The author uses
the images to create certain emotions important to his narrative as he anticipates
the feelings of the reader—a novel idea!
Gravendyk is also interested in the relation of texts and images, but not together
in a single work as in Pamuk’s Istanbul text, rather as an instance of ekphrasis twice
removed: she begins with J.M.W. Turner’s painting Slave Ship (1840), which was in-
accessible for thirty years and was thus replaced by John Ruskin’s ekphrastic com-
mentary published in Modern Painters I (1843). Both of these, in an act of “writing
back” are imaginatively reworked in the lengthy poem by David Dabydeen, “Turner,”
written about 150 years later. The proliferating Turners in the poem complicate its
reading and comment on the disturbing narrative of J.M.W. Turner’s painting, and
at the same time, Ruskin’s metaphorical “emptying out” of the work and its replace-
ment with his own commentary—a kind of transfer of interpretive ownership.

Intertextuality: An Introduction 149


Quoting Walter Benjamin, Gravendyk reveals a parallel in this text with Barthes’s
concept of the punctum, cited above: “to articulate the past historically does not
mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ . . . It means to seize hold of a memory as
it flashes up at a moment of danger.” This moment of acute awareness reappears as
an impetus in a number of the intertexual works investigated in these essays.
Martin’s contribution on the evolution of the graphic novel looks not at sequen-
tial relationships of influence and interpretation as in the Turner Stoff, but at the
co-­existence and interplay of text and image reminiscent of the Pamuk memoir.
This essay, which is the most broadly drawn of the four, traces the evolution of the
graphic novel within the comic book genre, focusing in particular on its socio-­
political function and its innovative stylistic iconoclasm. Within the genre, Art
Spiegelman’s two volumes of Maus (1986, 1991) have played a paradigmatic role:
confronting the punctum or the poignant moment—the moment of danger—that
was the Holocaust, while presenting a multilayered narrative, animal symbolism,
and (auto)biographical elements, and also investigating metatextual representa-
tions of the artist. A gradual shifting of the emphasis from image to text coincides
with a form-­breaking disregard for the limitations of the cartoon cells. The re-
sulting works present an interesting combination of ludic entertainment and con-
frontation with serious topics.
Eubanks’s essay can be read in tandem with that of Martin, in that she provides a
close reading of a single graphic novel Logicomix, that in many ways illustrates and
creatively develops ideas initially presented in the earlier essay. Logicomix provides,
reminiscent of Art Spiegelman in volume two of Maus, an ongoing metatextual
revelation of the four collaborators’ difficulties and artistic negotiations in adapting
both Bertrand Russell’s autobiography and his search for mathematical truth to
the format of the graphic novel. Although the comic format might first appear un-
suited for the material, Eubanks demonstrates that the creativity inherent to the
new genre, the graphic novel, aptly reflects the similar “creativity” and idiosyncrasy
of Russell’s life and his mathematical quest. The essays in this cluster address some
of the most important aspects of intertextuality, including creativity and idiosyn-
crasy, and, if we are unable to reach absolute agreement on the definition and spe-
cific parameters of the phenomenon, at least we will have, through this discussion,
expanded our understanding of its complexity.

u University of Alabama

notes
1 See, for example, Graham Allen, Intertextuality, Mary Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and
Contexts, and Stephen Weiner, Faster than a Speeding Bullet.

150 The Comparatist 35 : 2011


2 For a more detailed discussion of this essay’s history, see Orr, chapter 1, especially pp.
20–22.

Works Cited
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. London: Routledge, 2000.
Kristeva, Julia. “Word, Dialogue and Novel.” Ch. 4 in Sēmeiōtikē: recherches pour une
sémanalyse. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969. Also in Moi, Toril: 35–61.
Moi, Toril, ed. The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Orr, Mary. Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Vol. I. My Father Bleeds History. New York:
Pantheon, 1986.
———. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Vol. II. And Here My Troubles Began. New York:
Pantheon, 1991.
Weiner, Stephen. Faster than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York:
Nantier Beall Minoustchine, 2004.

Intertextuality: An Introduction 151

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