Abstract
The importance of intertextuality in a poetics of modern fictional writing is confirmed by the fact that this concept has been evoked by a multitude of writers who have often ascribed different meanings to it. Yet there is still no booklength study which is exclusively devoted to establishing a common ground between the different definitions. There is certainly not enough space for such a synthesis in the present chapter. However, by outlining the general scope of these definitions it will be possible to situate Claude Simon’s contribution to the concept within the current theoretical context.
But the common people I could not number, nor yet name, not even if ten tongues and ten mouths were mine, and a voice invincible, and a heart within me of bronze.
(Homer, Iliad II 488)
Not though a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths were mine, and a voice of iron, could I tell of all the shapes of wickedness and rehearse the names of all the punishments.
(Vergil, Aeneid VI 625)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and Reference
See Stephen Ullmann, Language and Style (Oxford, 1964), p. 180–1.
Michael Riffaterre, ‘Intertextual Scrambling’, Romanic Review, LxvIII, 3, (May 1977], 197–206.
Jonathan Culler, ‘Presupposition and Intertextuality’, MLN, XCI, (1976), 1390.
Jean Ricardou, ‘ “Claude Simon”, textuellement’, in Claude Simon: analyse, théorie (Paris, 1975), 11.
Bruce Morrissette, Intextextual Assemblage in Robbe-Grillet from Topology to The Golden Triangle (Fredericton, 1979), pp. 79–80.
K. K. Ruthven, Critical Assumptions (Cambridge, 1979), p. 112.
See Christine Brooke-Rose, A Grammar of Metaphor (London, 1965), p. 264
and Weldon Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses (Chapel Hill, 1968), p. 3.
Jacques Nathan, Citations, références et allusions de Marcel Proust dans A la recherche du temps perdu (Paris, 1969), p. 12.
Margaret Mein, A Foretaste of Proust (Westmead, 1974), p. 11.
Jean Ricardou, Nouveaux problèmes du roman (Paris, 1978), pp. 89–138.
Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 255.
Georges Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor (Paris, 1967), p. 144.
Copyright information
© 1988 Michael J. Evans
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Evans, M. (1988). What is Intertextuality?. In: Claude Simon and the Transgressions of Modern Art. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19471-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19471-1_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-19473-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-19471-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)