intertextuality

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With intertextuality is in the structuralist and poststructuralist influenced cultural and literary theory the phenomenon referred that no important element - no text so - within a cultural structure is conceivable without reference to the totality of the other texts. In literary studies , concrete relationships between individual literary texts are also referred to as "intertextuality".

The text-theoretical term intertextuality (lat. Inter for "between") describes simple to highly complex relationships between texts and, depending on the textual or literary historical or literary theoretical context, has a different meaning, which in extreme cases can assume comprehensive cultural-historical or cultural-sociological meanings . If the term text is not only understood as a well-ordered structure of linguistic signs , but also as a network of culture, cultural technology and social systems , intertextuality can also be understood as a “dialogue with culture” and “the import of texts from the past into a 'new' textual one Context ”.

Origin and basics of intertextuality research

The research of intertextuality is a very young subdiscipline that was not established in connection with critical methodological approaches in literary and textual studies until the late 1960s; the actual term (French: intertextualité ) was introduced in 1967 by Julia Kristeva . However, literary scholars have previously studied intertextual phenomena; In the positivism of the 19th century , for example, attempts were made to build up a " hermeneutic network" by collecting data and facts in order to be able to understand individual texts more appropriately. Likewise, in influence and reception research, the attempt has long been made to track down textual relationships among one another. Literary terms such as “ quote ”, “ parody ” or “ plagiarism ” also refer to relationships between different texts.

Intertextuality research in the narrower sense differs from traditional literary approaches primarily through a different understanding of literature. While in the 19th century until well into the 20th century literary texts are always seen as a unit with their author and the literary analysis or interpretation is primarily oriented towards the interpretation of the author's intentions , new literary and text theories have emerged since the 1960s which in some cases fundamentally question the assumption of fixed intentions of the author and displace the classic authority of the author from discussions in literary studies.

This new literary theoretical perspective is promoted in particular by the Russian literary scholar Michail Michailowitsch Bachtin ( Die Ästhetik des Wort , 1979) and various French poststructuralists such as Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes ( Critique and Truth , 1967) and Michel Foucault ( Schriften zur Literatur , 1993). The focus is clearly on the textuality of the text; Instead of focusing on fixed author intentions, there is now the meaning of changing, "unfixed" text intentions.

The text is no longer analyzed in its final form, but examined with regard to its processuality. The perspective shifts to the development of the text and its different, intertextually changing aggregate states. In this perspective, every text is to be seen at every stage of its creation as the result of changes in the underlying texts (also in the sense of cultural systems). Intertextuality research accordingly tries to decipher reference relationships between a so-called pheno-text (i.e. a specific literary text, e.g. a story) and the underlying geno -texts (also avant texts, i.e. cultural artifacts or works of art of various kinds). Accordingly, a pheno-text is to be understood as a network or web of numerous other texts.

The image of the “ palimpsest ” is sometimes used to illustrate this . Under the one text to be examined, other, earlier texts seem to emerge. In addition, intertextuality is usually not tied back to a specific author's intention, but rather seen as constitutive for any type of text production, even if the author should deny this.

Post-structuralist theories of intertextuality

Julia Kristeva

The term was coined by the Bulgarian-French psychoanalyst and cultural and literary scholar Julia Kristeva in her essay Bakhtine, le mot, le dialogue et le roman (1967), in which she describes Michail Bachtin 's model of dialogue on the textual status of literature as a whole transmitted. At Kristeva it is programmatically:

“Every text is built up as a mosaic of quotations, every text is absorption and transformation of another text. The concept of intertextuality takes the place of the concept of intersubjectivity , and the poetic language can at least be read as twofold. "

For Kristeva no text is a self-sufficient structure; Each text consists of a bundle of quotations , is a crossing point of other texts and provides the setting for their “permutation and transformation” (rearrangement and conversion) under the influence of its ideological preconditions. The term “text” includes not only written texts, but also cultural phenomena in general, insofar as they are elements of a structure. Such a “text” is therefore not stable and well defined, but open to interpretations , none of which can claim finality. Meaning can no longer be put into a text by an author or creator, but is only produced by the interpretation, whereby the interpreter can of course just as little control his own text as the author of the source text, so that this process of semiosis is basically infinite , a position outside of the text is impossible.

Roland Barthes

Intertextuality thus becomes an important moment in the post-structuralist deconstruction of the ( author ) subject , as carried out by Roland Barthes in his programmatic essay The Death of the Author :

The text is a web of quotations from different places of culture. […] A text is made up of a variety of writings that come from different cultures and enter into dialogue with one another, parody one another, question one another.

In About Myself , he writes: “The inter-text is not necessarily a field of influences; rather a music of figures, metaphors, word-thoughts; it is the signifier as siren. ”, in At the zero point of literature :“ [T] he literature becomes the utopia of language ”.

Harold Bloom

Even Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry 1973 (dt .: influence anxiety: A theory of poetry 1995) and his theory of misreading ( misreading ) can be regarded as intertextuality.

Building on a broad concept of intertextuality as the relation between the texts, Bloom primarily addresses the diachronic relation that exists between an author and the examination of his role models. According to Bloom, the writer is trying to break away from role models in order to place himself as far away as possible with his own text. Bloom sees literary history as the scene of a struggle between strong poets . Every new writer who wants to join them has to work on his (consciously or unconsciously) chosen role models by reinterpreting them according to his own ideas, i.e. misreading them. With his conception of intertextuality, Bloom is returning to more traditional literary theoretical approaches in which intertextuality is viewed and examined in a way in which the author-intentional elements are in the foreground.

Intertextuality in literary studies

Genette

Literary studies combined Kristeva's model with literary-historical methods of source and influence research and thus came to an intertextuality model that abandoned the universality of Kristeva's text theory in order to investigate forms of reference between literary works. The terms of two successive texts is seen as dialogue at the level of the whole text as a style -copy and - satire , parody , Cento or Hypolepse shows or at certain points in quotations and allusions reflected and enhanced the importance of both texts.

Gérard Genette's attempt to categorize the manifestations of “transtextuality” - as Genette calls intertextuality - was particularly influential ( “Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré” , 1982). Genette distinguishes between five different forms of intertextual or transtextual relationships:

  1. Intertextuality itself, that is, "the effective presence of one text in another" in the form of quotations (expressly declared adoptions), plagiarism (undeclared adoptions of quotations) or allusions (statements which require knowledge of the previous text to be fully understood ).
  2. the paratextuality . To ensure that everything is referred to what framing decidedly text: title, subtitle, forewords, afterwords, footnotes, etc., but also genre assignments or pretexts such as drafts and sketches of plants.
  3. the Metatextualität , ie comments that much more critical in nature and especially in the field of literary criticism concern.
  4. the Architextualität , which works closely with the Paratextualität is related. However, these are not specifically declared class assignments. This means that you assign a text (as a critic) the name of a genre. This also steers the reception to a considerable extent.
  5. the hypertextuality . This is a way of overlaying text that is not a comment . Hypertextuality means that the later text is inconceivable without the first, as is the case with James Joyce 's novel “Ulysses” (1922), which would never have been written without Homer's “ Odyssey ” epic.

Generally speaking, intertextuality is the relationship between texts, whereby the individual text reference (integration of a text into another, for example by quotation, allusion, as a parody, pastiche, travesty, etc.) is determined by the system reference (relationship between a text and general text systems, for example literary genres). The analysis of intertextuality becomes problematic when authors work intertextually, but do not identify them (using quotation marks or italics or naming names). Here the line between plagiarism is fluid.

On the other hand, there is of course the possibility that an author unconsciously makes intertextual references that come to light through the reading knowledge of the reader. In this case, intertextuality research shifts from the author-text relationship to the text-reader relationship. This relationship can be described more precisely if the degree of intertextual marking is examined, as Jörg Helbig suggests. The problem of intertextuality is one of the most interesting and important research subjects in comparative literature , as it has expanded the concept of text and provides greater insight into what constitutes a literary text in its essence, making it a specific artistic activity of man.

Pfister

In an article in the anthology he edited, Manfred Pfister gives six possibilities for scaling intertextual references:

  1. Referentiality: A relationship between texts is all the more intertextual, the more one text thematizes the other, exposing its individuality.
  2. Communicativity: The degree of awareness of the intertextual reference in the author and the recipient, the intentionality and the clarity of the marking in the text itself.
  3. Autoreflexivity: Not only the conscious and clearly marked placement of intertextual references, but also reflection on the intertextual conditionality and relatedness of the text in itself.
  4. Structurality: The syntagmatic integration of the syntagms into the text.
  5. Selectivity: Degree of pointing of a certain element from a pretext to the reference foil.
  6. Dialogicity: The tension, the stronger the original and the new context are in semantic and ideological tension.

See also

literature

  • Graham Allen: Intertextuality. Routledge, London et al. 2000, ISBN 0-415-17474-0 .
  • Harold Bloom : The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press, New York NY 1973.
  • Harold Bloom: A Map of Misreading. Oxford University Press, New York NY 1975.
  • Ulrich Broich, Manfred Pfister (Ed.): Intertextuality. Forms, functions, English case studies (= concepts of linguistics and literary studies. 35). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1985, ISBN 3-484-22035-X .
  • Jay Clayton, Eric Rothstein (Eds.): Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI et al. 1991, ISBN 0-299-13030-4 .
  • Gérard Genette : Palimpsests. Second level literature (= edition suhrkamp . 1683 = new series 683). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-518-11683-5 .
  • Thomas Griffig: Intertextuality in linguistic essays in English and German (= theory and teaching of language. 44). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2006, ISBN 3-631-55521-0 (At the same time: Aachen, University, dissertation, 2005).
  • Jörg Helbig: Intertextuality and marking. Investigations into the systematics and function of the signaling of intertextuality (= contributions to recent literary history. Volume 3, 141). Winter, Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 3-8253-0340-3 (also: Berlin, Free University, dissertation).
  • John Hollander : The Figure of Echo. A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1981, ISBN 0-520-04187-9 .
  • Susanne Holthuis: Intertextuality. Aspects of a reception-oriented conception (= Stauffenburg-Colloquium. 28). Stauffenburg, Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-86057-128-1 (also: Bielefeld, University, dissertation, 1992).
  • Julia Kristeva : Σημειωτική. Recherches pour une sémanalyse (= Points. Littérature. 96, ZDB -ID 2606742-0 ). Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1969.
  • Julia Kristeva: Word, Dialogue and Novel by Bakhtin (1967). In: Jens Ihwe (ed.): Literary studies and linguistics. Results and Perspectives. Volume 3: On the linguistic basis of literary studies II. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 345–375.
  • Renate Lachmann : Levels of the concept of intertextuality. In: Karlheinz Stierle , Rainer Warning (ed.): The conversation (= poetics and hermeneutics. 11). Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2243-5 , pp. 133-138.
  • Renate Lachmann (ed.): Dialogicity (= theory and history of literature and the fine arts. Series A: Hermeneutics, semiotics, rhetoric. 1). Fink, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7705-2089-0 .
  • Taïs E. Morgan: Is There an Intertext in This Text? Literary and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intertextuality. In: American Journal of Semiotics. Vol. 3, No. 4, 1985, ISSN  0277-7126 , pp. 1-40, doi : 10.5840 / ajs1985342 .
  • Ralph Olsen, Hans-Bernhard Petermann, Jutta Rymarczyk (eds.): Intertextuality and education - didactic and professional perspectives (= educational concepts and practice. 66). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2006, ISBN 3-631-54570-3 .
  • Manfred Pfister: Intertextuality. In: Dieter Borchmeyer , Viktor Žmegač (ed.): Modern literature in basic terms. 2nd, revised edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1994, ISBN 3-484-10652-2 , pp. 215-218.
  • Heinrich F. Plett (Ed.): Intertextuality (= Research in Text Theory. 15). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1991, ISBN 3-11-011637-5 .
  • Michael Riffaterre : Semiotics of Poetry (= University Paperbacks. 684). Methuen, London 1980, ISBN 0-416-73200-3 .
  • Peter Stocker: Theory of Intertextual Reading. Models and case studies. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1998, ISBN 3-506-73010-X (also: Friborg, University, dissertation, 1997).
  • Karlheinz Stierle : Work and Intertextuality. In: Karlheinz Stierle, Rainer Warning (ed.): The conversation (= poetics and hermeneutics. 11). Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2243-5 , pp. 139-150.

Web links

Wiktionary: Intertextuality  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Bein: Intertextuality. In: Gerhard Lauer, Christine Ruhrberg (Hrsg.): Lexicon literary studies · Hundred basic terms . Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-010810-9 , pp. 134–137, here p. 134. Here, Bein refers to Renate Lachmann: Memory and Literature , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3- 518-58019-1 .
  2. ↑ Thomas Bein: Intertextuality . In Gerhard Lauer, Christine Ruhrberg (Hrsg.): Lexicon literary studies · Hundred basic terms . Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-010810-9 , pp. 134-137, here pp. 134f.
  3. ↑ Thomas Bein: Intertextuality . In Gerhard Lauer, Christine Ruhrberg (Hrsg.): Lexicon literary studies · Hundred basic terms . Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-010810-9 , pp. 134-137, here pp. 135f.
  4. ↑ Roland Barthes: The death of the author. In: Fotis Jannidis, Gerhard Lauer, Matias Martinez, Simone Winko (eds.): Texts on the theory of authorship. Stuttgart 2000, p. 190 f.
  5. ^ Roland Barthes: About myself. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-88221-206-3 , p. 158.
  6. ↑ Glossary: ​​Intertextuality . Literary theories on the net . Online website of the Free University of Berlin . Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  7. ↑ Philip Theisohn: plagiarism. An unoriginal literary story. Kröner, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-35101-2 ; on the relationship between plagiarism and intertextuality, see also the review by Thomas Kupka: Seelenraub und Selbstschaltungs. In: literaturkritik.de , Volume 11, October 2009. literaturkritik.de
  8. ↑ Manfred Pfister: Concepts of Intertextuality. In: Ulrich Broich, Manfred Pfister (Ed.): Intertextuality. Forms, functions, English case studies. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1985, pp. 1-30.