This collection explores and clarifies two of the most contested ideas in literary theory - influence and intertextuality. The study of influence tends to centre on major authors and canonical works, identifying prior documents as sources or contexts for a given author. Intertextuality, on the other hand, is a concept unconcerned with authors as individuals; it treats all texts as part of a network of discourse that includes culture, history and social practices as well as other literary works. In thirteen essays drawing on the entire spectrum of English and American literary history, this volume considers the relationship between these two terms across the whole range of their usage.

Presents lucid and exemplary critical essays, introducing readers to J. M. Coetzee's works, practices, horizons and relations.

The poetics of intertextuality proposed in this book, based mainly on semiotics, elucidates factors determining the socio-historically elusive border between general intertextuality and citationality, and explores modes of intertextual representation.

Why was the term ‘intertextuality’ coined? Why did its first theorists feel the need to replace or complement those terms – of quotation, allusion, echo, reference, influence, imitation, parody, pastiche, among others – which had previously seemed adequate and sufficient to the description of literary relations? Why, especially in view of the fact that it is still met with resistance, did the new concept achieve such popularity so fast? Why has it retained its currency in spite of its inherent paradoxes? Since 1966, when Kristeva defined every text as a ‘mosaic of quotations’, ‘intertextuality’ has become an all-pervasive catchword in literature and other humanities departments; yet the notion, as commonly used, remains nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. This book seeks to shed light on this thought-provoking but treacherously polyvalent concept by tracing the theory’s core ideas and emblematic images to paradigm shifts in the fields of science, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics, focusing on the shaping roles of Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, and Bakhtin. In so doing, it elucidates the meaning of one of the most frequently used terms in contemporary criticism, thereby providing a much-needed foundation for clearer discussions of literary relations across the discipline and beyond.

No text has its meaning alone; all texts have their meaning in relation to other texts. Since Julia Kristeva coined the term in the 1960s, intertextuality has been a dominant idea within literary and cultural studies leaving none of the traditional ideas about reading or writing undisturbed. Graham Allen's Intertextuality outlines clearly the history and the use of the term in contemporary theory, demonstrating how it has been employed in: structuralism post-structuralism deconstruction postcolonialism Marxism feminism psychoanalytic theory. Incorporating a wealth of illuminating examples from literary and cultural texts, this book offers an invaluable introduction to intertextuality for any students of literature and culture.

The study of the deliberate allusion by one author to the words of a previous author has long been central to Latin philology. However, literary Romanists have been diffident about situating such work within the more spacious inquiries into intertextuality now current. This 1998 book represents an attempt to find (or recover) some space for the study of allusion - as a project of continuing vitality - within an excitingly enlarged universe of intertexts. It combines traditional classical approaches with modern literary-theoretical ways of thinking, and offers attentive close readings, innovative perspectives on literary history, and theoretical sophistication of argument. Like other volumes in the series it is among the most broadly conceived short books on Roman literature to be published in recent years.

The book remains a central work of criticism for all students of literature.

J. Todd Hibbard examines the way in which Isaiah 24-27 reuses earlier texts and traditions as part of its literary strategy. He analyzes those literary connections under the rubric of intertextuality, an idea taken over from modern literary studies. Intertextuality is normally recognized as describing an orientation to one or more texts, but does not define a particular methodology. Moreover, because intertextuality is a term that is used in biblical studies in a variety of ways, the first part of this work seeks to define a methodology based on an intertextual approach that is useful for studying prophetic texts. This methodology attempts to understand the ways in which an ancient author may have appropriated an earlier text in a new composition. It requires that texts share common vocabulary and themes, be chronologically possible, and exegetically meaningful to be a true intertextual connection. In terms of literary technique, the author recognizes that intertextual connections may be forged through citations, allusions, and echoes. Finally, he considers several possible purposes for such intertextual connections. The major exegetical categories for understanding the intertextual connections noted in Isaiah 24-27 include texts which universalize earlier judgment passages, texts which universalize earlier restoration and salvation passages, and texts which respond to earlier prophetic texts that are considered unfulfilled.

This collection of essays reaffirms the central importance of adopting an intertextual approach to the study of Flavian epic poetry and shows, despite all that has been achieved, just how much still remains to be done on the topic. Most of the contributions are written by scholars who have already made major contributions to the field, and taken together they offer a set of state of the art contributions on individual topics, a general survey of trends in recent scholarship, and a vision of at least some of the paths work is likely to follow in the years ahead. In addition, there is a particular focus on recent developments in digital search techniques and the influence they are likely to have on all future work in the study of the fundamentally intertextual nature of Latin poetry and on the writing of literary history more generally.

Dante beyond influence is the first study to conceptualise and historicise the hermeneutic turn in Dante reception history and Victorian cultural history, charting its development across intellectual realms, agents and forms of readerly and writerly engagement. Unearthing previously unseen manuscript and print evidence, the book conducts a material and book-historical inquiry into the formation and popularisation of the critical and scholarly discourse on Dante through Victorian periodicals, mass-publishing, traditional and Extramural higher education. The book demonstrates that the transformation of Dante from object of amateur interest (dantophilia) to subject of systematic interpretive endeavours (dantismo) reflected paradigmatic changes in Victorian intellectual and socio-cultural history.