Intertextuality as Spatialization
Dr. Karin Wenz, English Department, University
of Kassel
Intertextuality
divides the text into two axes: a horizontal axis, which is the linear
connection between author and reader through
the text, and a vertical axis, which connects the text to other outer texts
"of the anterior literary corpus and the text as an absorption of a reply
to another text" (Kristeva 1980: 69). These two axes create a two-dimensional
space. There is no fixed position in the connection between these four
elements. There is only movement between author, reader, text, and intertext.
This movement is the movement of "différance",
only available as a trace which can be elucidated in interpretation. The
virtual presence of many voices is interwoven in these intertextual relation.
As Barthes
(1977: 146) puts it, "the text is not a line of words but a multidimensional
space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend
and clash."
references
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