Structuralist Approach To Intertextuality English Literature Essay

He focused on the texts as an interrelated system. He used Genettes quote to view his points on characteristics of structuralist and semiological the ability to constitute a system is precisely the characteristic of any set of signs, and it is this constitution that marks the passage from pure symbolism to the strictly semiological state (Allen, 2000:95)

“the essential thrust of the structuralist project seems to be towards the intertextual, in that it denies the existence of unitary objects and emphasizes their systematic and relational nature, be they literary texts or other art works” (Allen 2000: 95,96).

Allen outlines Genette’s approach to the field of intertextuality. Define Genette’s terms: transtexuality, architextuality, intertextuality, metatextuality, paratextuality, hypertextuality.

Transtextuality: “Genette not only makes major revisions in the practice of poetics, he also produces a coherent theory and map of what he terms ‘transtextuality’, which we might style ‘intertextuality from the viewpoint of structural poetics’.” (Allen, 2000: 98)

“Textual transcendence, or transtextuality, is, according to Genette, precisely what poetics has been attempting to describe via the confused and misleading tools so far discussed. It includes issues of imitation, transformation, the classification of types of discourse, along with the hematic, modal, generic and formal categories and categorizations of traditional poetics.” (Allen, 2000: 100)

Architextuality: “architextuality, the fifth type of transtextuality in Genette’s map. This aspect of the text, he suggests, has to do with ‘the reader’s expectations, and thus their reception of a work’.” (Allen, 2000: 102)

“As Genette states, emphasizing the open nature of this vision of poetics: ‘The architext is, then, everywhere – above, beneath, around the text, which spins its web only by hooking it here and there onto that network of architexture'” (Allen, 2000: 100)

Intertextuality: “Genette’s intertextuality is, however, not the concept employed within poststructuralism, since he reduces it to ‘a relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts’ and as ‘the actual presence of one text within another’ (Allen, 2000: 101)

Hypertextuality: “any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call a hypotext) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it a hypertext), upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary” (Allen 2000: 107).

Metatextuality: “when a text takes up a relation of ‘commentary’ to another text: ‘It unites a given text to another, of which it speaks without necessarily citing it (without summoning it), in fact sometimes even without naming it'” (Allen 2000: 102).

Paratextuality: “A paratext represents borderline of a text which aims at directing the reader’s interpretation of the text body.” (Allen 2000: 103)

Study the title page of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho…..

The title provides more information about the main body of the novel and helps the reader to have a better understanding. Peritext is the main textual relation which is set up by the title, form of narration. Epitexts can be found in the title and editorial information section. The novel has the element of architextuality, because two factors of romance and poetry can be found the story.

Study the title page of Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742). What relations are posited?

Hypertextuality is one of the elements that can be mentioned, because of Josepth Andrews’s relationship to the source text. Joseph Andrews can be called hypertext, therefore Don Quixote is a hypotext. Since the novel is a parody of Cervantes novel joseph Andrews is intentionally hypertextual. The title page has also paratextuality since it has peritext and epitext. Peritext: (“Written in Imitation of The Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote”) Epitext: (“In two volumes”, “Vol.I”, “London: Printed for A. Millar, over-againft St. Clement’s Church, in the Strand. M.DCC.XLII.”)

In her acknowledgment to On Beauty (2005) ………

Narration in both stories is similar to each other in a sense that in both the story is told in form of letters. In the opening lines one can see how two works are considered as hypertextual in their form: “One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father” (Smith 2005: 3), “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister” (Forster 1985: 19). All the events and other characters are described and portrayed through the main character. In Smith’s story the letter is typed and modern style has been used judging from the format and of course the letterhead is the obvious clue. However, in the other story the letter is written in a normal manner. Tone in both chapters is excited and a little ironic. Characters have a lot in common, both young and inexperienced. The temporal setting of hypertext and hypotext has almost 70 or 80 years difference, which the clues can be found in the text such as the time that Victoria mentions that she is inter-railing in Europe (Smith 2005: 4). Special transposition from Foster is the fact that Gerome writes at his office during lunch time.

The plot of John Fowles ……

The presence of the narrator is felt from the very beginning. In Chapter 13 of “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” by John Fowles, clearly one sees how the author had employed all the resources and techniques that Postmodernism offered. He questioned the relationship between fiction and reality; he challenged the traditional roles of author and reader. Finally, he has invited the reader to play the role of a detective, to make him or her part of his fiction.

In Chapter 55, when Charles learned that Sarah had left the hotel for London, he went to London to look for Sarah. When readers are immersed in the complicated relationship between the Sarah and Charles, the author suddenly appears in the novel reminding the readers that the fictional nature of the characters and the plot. The purpose of doing this is to challenge the rules and regulations of the traditional novels and questions the idea of reality.

Chapters 13 and 55 of The French Lieutenant Woman …..

The novelist intentions are hidden, however readers are encouraged to go one step further and look for what is behind the surface. Fowles deliberately wants the readers to propose questions to the novelist. Chapter 13 is significant for the insertion of the novelist as Fowles plays with postmodern techniques and disrupts the realism. By reminding the readers that this work has been imagined by the author, the novel becomes a self-reflexive metafiction as it turns into a work of fiction that discusses the process of writing fiction. The epigram of chapter 55 is a reference to people not appearing as they seem, and the confusion caused by this. Tweedledee and Tweedledum are notorious for the nonsensical riddles they tell Alice.

After Miss Julie

1.

Imitation – 2. Something produced as a copy: counterfeit; 3: a literary work designed to reproduce the style of another author (Miriam Webster’s Dictionary)

Adaptation – a composition rewritten into a new form (Miriam Webster’s Dictionary)

Appropriation – The word becomes one’s own through an act of ‘appropriation’, which means that it is never wholly one’s own, is always already permeated with traces of other words, other uses. (Graham, 2000: 28).

The term appropriation refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work [1] (as in ‘the artist uses appropriation’) or refers to the new work itself (as in ‘this is a piece of appropriation art’).

According to definitions that were found After Miss Julie is an adaptation, because After Miss Julie is rewriting Miss Julie in a new form

2- How social position relations works among different characters and how they follow or break the conventions in a social class

3- Both of the plays are about how people in different social classes interact with each other. One happens during midsummer celebration in Sweden and other one happens in England after an election.

4- Bringing the story to a new era was wrong in a sense that in 20th century interaction between different social classes and genders is much acceptable and it is almost having without any problem or prejudices. The way that it is looked upon men and women responsibilities has changed and people are breaking norm every day. in general, I agree with Leland that Marber has chosen wrong era for his story.

Saturday

When we meet for the concluding seminar on the course, we will discuss McEwan’s Saturday (2005) from an intertextual perspective, paying attention to various manifestations of intertextuality (for example, allusions, quotations, references, echoes) and consider their function, both in the diegesis and for the novel as a whole (as text). Preparing for the seminar, you might want to consider the following:

The most obvious element of Intertextuality is represented by the actual situation of the word, terrorist attacks, and inspectors of weapons of mass destructions in Iraq. Washington and London talk about humanitarian reasons of the next war in Iraq.

The huge demonstration in the center of London which is the biggest in the actual history of Great Britain with an illusion (P125) Where he compare it to Shakespeare’s St Crispin Day Speech assembling

P16 It’s almost already 18 months since half the planet watched

P29 Hans Blix a case of war

P62. This war is going to happen with or without UN

100. How open societies deal with the new world situation, will determine how open they remain

P62. This war is going to happen with or without the UN

P69. Blix Telling UN Iraqis beginning to Cooperate … PM in speech in Glasgow the humanitarian reason for war.

P141. Does this man sincerely believe that going to war will make us safer?

– The novel’s epigraph (Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964)

McEwan used Herzog, because there are common elements in both novels. For instance, the age of both main characters in the novel, one is 48 and the other is 47.also, Herzog write different letters in his head which he does not send them and on the other hand, Perowne write down his thoughts in his diary. Moreover, both characters go through series of unpleasant and strange events that they did not expected. And maybe the main quote in the epigraph is “Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities.”

P3 disturbed by the situation of the world. P15,16,17 terrorist actions. P33 Jihadists

P29 I just seen a plane on fire heading into Heathrow.

P32. Despite the troops mustering in the Gulf … Bin Laden’s promise on tape of martyrdom attacks on London,

P122. Who was the American novelist who said a man could be happy on Charlotte Street?

-Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, both on plot level and for the novel as a whole (thematics, imagery, etc) (in some editions of the novel, you will find Arnold’s poem appended at the back)

-Literary relations set up by the title, revealing the single-day timespan (evoking, for instance, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway which some critics find similarities with in other respects as well – of course, you need not read Mrs. Dalloway for this occasion but if you are already familiar with Woolf’s novel, you might want to consider what parallels you can find, based on your earlier reading and recollections)

– Other references, literary and non-literary, that you have found in the text

Racial differences between East and West. East is on war with terrorism, Islam, The Middle East, West Indians and so on. They are others they are not European, they are terrorist, extremist, drugs dealers and so on

P79. He stops at the Junction of the two roads. …that suggests he himself would have bombed Iraq long ago, and many other countries besides.

124. Three figures in black burkhas …. Men wear suits, tracksuit or baggy shorts. Critic to the Islamic culture and traditions based on the sexual difference between man and women taking example from his client of Saudis

125. China embassy and Arab dress mode. Elements of the darker mood

127 Not only distant people are our brothers and sisters, but foxes to, and laboratory mice and now the fish.

145 There are two West Indians and two, sometimes three Middle Easterners who might be Turks …. (drugs).

151 But there are rumours on the internet.’ About the Koran, The Pilots are radical Islamists. One’s a Chechen, the other’s Algerian.