Intertextuality

Intertextuality

A few years back I read Richard F Thomas’ wonderful book Why Bob Dylan Matters. I’ve been a Dylan fan for many years, and I found the central idea of the book fascinating. Thomas argues that Dylan is a master of intertextuality.

That’s an unfamiliar word for most of us that requires some explanation. The dictionary definition of intertextuality is “the relationships between texts, especially literary ones” or “the shaping of a text’s meaning by another text.”

Intertextuality can mean anything from the unintentional use of someone else’s ideas to outright robbery. Dylan’s songbook employs the full range of the term. Much of his work refers to old tales and Biblical stories but some songs seem to be wholesale steals from earlier folk sources.

Joni Mitchell has accused Dylan of being a plagiarist and at times he seems to find shameless pleasure in flaunting his borrowings. The album “Love and Theft” is filled with songs that are quite obviously not his. But Dylan winks at us with the title of the album. Being called “Love and Theft” is enough of a clue about what’s going on, but he offers an additional hint to his meaning by having the title in quotation marks (his only album that does this).

Most of us who write try not to borrow too much from other sources, but I think intertextuality is always there whether intentional or not.

In my novel VIRAL, the story of John is based loosely and unapologetically on the travels of Odysseus in The Odyssey. The epilogue of the book is a couple of pages of unpunctuated stream of consciousness. It’s not as hard to get through as the final 60 pages of Ulysses, but I think it’s clear where the inspiration for this part of the book comes from.

If we want to look carefully, this is compound intertextuality. I have used an idea from James Joyce who in turn used The Odyssey as the skeleton for his book.

Intertextuality covers a lot of ground and using it isn’t necessarily a bad thing for authors. It could be argued that everything written today uses intertextuality to some degree. There is nothing new under the sun.

Literary critics like to divide the term into seven types. They are quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche and parody. It’s worth considering what all these kinds of intertextuality mean.

Quotation is familiar to us, it’s the repetition of a section of someone else’s writing that is acknowledged by the writer. This is done frequently and no one objects.

Allusion is when a writer refers to something from another work somewhat indirectly and leaves it up to the reader to see the connection. This is what I attempted in VIRAL.

Calque is when a word or phrase is borrowed from another language. There is a certain “Je ne sais quoi” about this kind of intertextuality.

Plagiarism is one we all understand. This is when something is stolen from another source without any credit being given. Authors using this are dishonestly claiming credit for ideas that are not their own. This one isn’t acceptable to anyone.

Translation is simply repeating ideas in another language. As long as translations are identified as such, they are perfectly acceptable.

Pastiche is a work of art that imitates the style or character or another work or artist. This is generally a celebration of the work being emulated.

Parody is much like pastiche except that it tends to mock the work that is being imitated.

Writers use all these forms of intertextuality (hopefully not too much plagiarism). This blog on intertextuality is itself an example of the form. I first came across the idea in a book about Bob Dylan and then my running partner pointed out the different types of intertextualities on one of our morning runs. Finally, I went to the internet for information about almost everything I’ve written here.

In the end, I hope by combining the thoughts and writings of others I’ve come up with something that is at least partly original. Still, the text is filled with intertextuality.