ABSTRACT
The term ‘intertextuality’ is now common in literary discourse. It is used most often and most simply to refer to literary allusions and to direct quotation from literary and non-literary texts. But this is only one small part of the theory, which has its origins in the work of Julia Kristeva (1969) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1973). Since poststructuralist thinking has extended the idea of the text beyond the boundaries of its being merely a written discourse, the possibilities for theories and theorisations of intertextuality are now legion. Intertextuality embraces discourse per se, in its uttered, illustrated, written, mimed or gestured manifestations; it includes images and moving images, the social and cultural context, subjectivities – which are the reading/seeing/speaking/writing/painting/thinking subjects – and, indeed, language itself. Theorists and teachers of literature alike are recognising the place of intertextual understandings in literary studies for readers’ reception and production of texts, as an adjunct to reader-response theory. Teachers are engaging with the concept of intertextuality in their use of literature with young children as a means by which to build up ‘interpretive communities’ (Fish 1980) among young readers, to give a window on the processes of meaning-making during a reading, and for engaging in text creation and production (see, for example, Bloome and Egan-Robertson 1993; Bromley 1996; Cairney 1990, 1992; Lemke 1992; Many and Anderson 1992; Short 1996; Sipe 2000). Intertextual considerations and understandings are also important in the translation of texts where a source text from one language and culture is translated for a culturally and linguistically different target audience (see Desmet 2001; O’Sullivan 1998).
