Editing Intertextuality (section)

==History==
[[File:ulyssesCover.jpg|thumb|upright|[[James Joyce]]'s 1922 novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' bears an intertextual relationship to [[Homer]]'s ''[[Odyssey]]''.]]
[[Julia Kristeva]] coined the term "intertextuality" (''intertextualité'')<ref>analysis of ''Jehan de Saintré'', (in the collective volume ''Théorie d'ensemble'', Paris, Seuil, 1968).</ref> in an attempt to synthesize [[Ferdinand de Saussure]]'s [[semiotics]]: his study of how [[Sign (semiotics)|signs]] derive their meaning from the structure of a text ([[Mikhail Bakhtin|Bakhtin's]] [[dialogic|dialogism]]); his theory suggests a continual dialogue with other works of literature and other authors; and his examination of the multiple meanings, or "[[heteroglossia]]", of texts (especially novels) or individual words.<ref name="Irwin,2 p227–242, 228" /> According to Kristeva,<ref name="desire">{{Cite book |title=Desire in language : a semiotic approach to literature and art |last=Kristeva |first=Julia |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1980 |isbn=0231048068 |location=New York |pages=66 |oclc=6016349}}</ref> "the notion of intertextuality replaces the notion of [[intersubjectivity]]" when we realize that meaning is not transferred directly from writer to reader but is instead mediated or filtered by "codes" imparted to the writer and reader by other texts. For example, when we read [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' we decode it as a [[modernist]] literary experiment or as a response to the epic tradition, or as part of some other [[conversation]], or as part of many conversations at once. This intertextual view of literature, as shown by [[Roland Barthes]], supports the concept that the meaning of a text does not reside in the text, but is produced by the reader in relation both to the text in question and the complex network of texts evoked by the reading process.

While the theoretical concept of intertextuality is associated with [[post-modernism]], the device itself is not new. [[New Testament]] passages quote from the [[Old Testament]] and Old Testament books such as [[Deuteronomy]] or the [[Nevi'im|prophet]]s refer to the events described in [[Book of Exodus|Exodus]] (for discussions on using 'intertextuality' to describe the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, see [[Stanley E. Porter|Porter]] 1997; [[B. J. Oropeza|Oropeza]] 2013; Oropeza & Moyise, 2016).{{Citation needed|date=March 2025|reason=Which scholarly papers exactly are being referenced?}} Whereas a [[Redaction criticism|redaction critic]] would use such intertextuality to argue for a particular order and process of the authorship of the books in question, [[literary criticism]] takes a synchronic view that deals with the texts in their final form, as an interconnected body of [[literature]]. This interconnected body extends to later poems and paintings that refer to Biblical narratives, just as other texts build networks around Greek and Roman [[Classical antiquity|Classical]] history and mythology.

=== Post-structuralism ===
More recent [[Post-structuralism|post-structuralist]] theory, such as that formulated in Daniela Caselli's ''[[Samuel Beckett|Beckett]]'s [[Dante]]s: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism'' (MUP 2005), re-examines "intertextuality" as a production within texts, rather than as a series of relationships between different texts. Some postmodern theorists<ref>Gerard Genette, ''Palimpsests: literature in the second degree'', Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (trans.), University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE and London.</ref> like to talk about the relationship between "intertextuality" and "hypertextuality" (not to be confused with [[Hypertext (semiotics)|hypertext]], another semiotic term coined by [[Gérard Genette]]); intertextuality makes each text a "living hell of hell on earth"<ref>Kristeva, 66.</ref> and part of a larger mosaic of texts, just as each [[hypertext]] can be a web of links and part of the whole [[World-Wide Web]]. The World-Wide Web has been theorized as a unique realm of reciprocal intertextuality, in which no particular text can claim centrality, yet the Web text eventually produces an image of a community—the group of people who write and read the text using specific discursive strategies.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Mitra|first=Ananda|year=1999|title=Characteristics of the WWW Text: Tracing Discursive Strategies|url=http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue1/mitra.html|journal=Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication|volume=5|issue=1|page=1|doi=10.1111/j.1083-6101.1999.tb00330.x|url-access=subscription}}</ref>