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Intertextuality and Theocritus 13 |
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By
A. Maria Van Erp Taalman Kip |
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Introduction:
Intertextuality |
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The term intertextuality derives from Julia Kristeva, according to whom every text is ''a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another" (1980: 36). And elsewhere she describes the phenomenon as follows: "any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; 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" (1980: 66). |
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The term has gained a firm foothold since the appearance of Kristeva's book, but that is not to say that all critics use it in the same way she does, or even share her views. To Kristeva intertextuality is the conditio sine qua non of every written or spoken text and she quickly dropped the term when others began to use it in a sense not meant by her "le sens banal de 'critique des sources' d'un texte" (1974: 59). |
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Although my discussion will centre on Theocritus' poem, and not on the theory of intertextuality, a few preliminary remarks are in order. It is customary today to distinguish between a broad and a restricted concept of intertextuality and these different concepts entail rather different views on fundamental issues: the status of the author, the work and the reader.1 Kristeva virtually abolished the role of the author. Her concept of intertextuality is, as Pfister says, "the text-theoretical lever with which she, in the context of a marxist-freudian deconstruction of subjectivity, wants to disrupt the bourgeois concept of an autonomous subject who wants to convey something. The author of the text thereby becomes the mere playground of the intertextual game, whereas the production shifts to the text itself" (1985: 8).2 |
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1 For a general survey of opinions, see Mertens and Beekman (1990) 124, and Pfister (1985). |
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2 "Der texttheoretische Hebel, mit dem sie im Kontext einer marxistisch-freudianischen Dekonstruktion der Subjektivität den bürgerlichen Begriff eines autonomen und intentionalen Subjekts aus den Angeln heben will. Der Autor eines Textes wird damit zum blossen Projektionsraum des intertextuellen Spiels, während die Produktivität auf den Text selber |
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(footnote continued on next page) |
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