Dr Wassila MOURO

Intertextuality
According to Bakhtin (1981), the “European novel prose is born and shaped in the process of a free
(that is, reformulating) translation of other’s works” (p. 378). Bakhtin seems to underline another feature of
the novel, and that is called intertextuality.
Intertextuality is a subtle interplay of writing and re-writing. Michel Foucault writes ‘each work
belongs to the indefinite murmur of writing’ (Achour & Bekkat, 2002,p. 117). It is this ‘murmur’ that gives
literature its memory, and the novel according to Mikhail Bakhtin, is where intertextuality is more intense
than in other literary genres, though he never uses the term intertextuality, rather, he proposes ‘polyphony’
which in its turn implies dialogism (Ibid,p 104-5). A dialogism not only between texts and authors, but
between texts and ‘the world of lived experience’ as Scott Lash observes (Chandler,1994). Intertextuality is
then a complex process of intertwined influences and relationships of texts, authors, genres and the outside
world.
Heinrich F. Plett (1991) explains the way intertextuality comes to exist; “whenever a new text
comes into being it relates to previous texts and in its turn becomes the precursor of subsequent texts” (p. 17)
Umberto Eco argues that ‘no text is read independently from the experience that the reader has from other
texts (Cited in Achour & Bekkat, 2002,p. 123). Thus, intertextuality is a matter of decoding, of interpreting.

It is, then, the reader who starts the mechanism of intertextuality. A mechanism where ‘a text T2 is
enriched by certain semantic values that come from its intertext T1’ (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1983,p. 130).
Michael Riffaterre (1984)focuses on the fact that intertext and intertextuality should not be
confused. The intertext he explains is “a corpus of texts, textual fragments, or text like segments of the
sociolect that shares a lexicon and, to an extent, a syntax with the text we are reading” (p. 142), whereas
intertextuality is “a modality of perception, the deciphering of the text by the reader in such a way that he
identifies the structures to which a text owes its quality of work of art” (Riffaterre, 1980,p. 625). During the
process of reading, the reader might perceive “similar comparabilities from text to text” or assume that
“such comparing must be done even if there is no intertext at hand wherein to find comparabilities” (Ibid,p.
626), thus the intertext is a text taken from another text, and intertextuality is the process by which these
comparabilities, similarities and differences are decoded in the mind of the reader; it is then a matter of the
reader’s interpretation of a given text. Riffaterre’s several definitions of intertextuality and intertext lead to
the following understanding of intertextuality as being “a structured network of text-generated constraints on
the reader’s perception”. For Riffaterre (1994) , intertextuality is based on ‘a system of difficulties’,
‘limitations of freedom of choice’, ‘exclusions’, all related to the reader since he/she is the one who is going
to identify the intertext and therefore decode intertextuality (p. 781).
Julia Kristeva (1986) was the first one to use the term intertextuality. She considers every text as “a
mosaic of references to other texts, genres and discourses. Every text or set of signs presupposes a network
of relationships to other signs like strings that have lost their exact references” (p. 37).
Hence, no text is unique or original in itself as Roland Barthes declares
A text is…a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations…The writer can only imitate
a gesture… His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others…
(Chandler, 1994)
Intertextuality is not only the ‘influences’ of writers on each other, but much more than that. It is the
impact of genres on each other as well. Nathalie Piégay-Gros explains the history of literature as being free
from any relation to extra-literary causes, she argues that “the renewal of works, the abandonment of
particular genres, or the birth of new forms” are related to “the interplay of the established relationships
between works”, it is this process “that drives the evolution of texts” (Cited in Achour & Bekkat, 2002,p.
103).
Wolfgang Iser in L’Acte de Lecture (1976) emphasizes the fact that a text’s repertoire is always a mixture
of ‘anterior literature and extra textual norms’ (p. 144-5), as well. Thus, intertextuality possesses a kind of
dialogism (Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept). There are dialogues between texts, authors, and even literary forms
or genres (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1983,p. 131-33).
Gerard Genette (1992 &1997) used the term ‘transtextuality’ rather than that of intertextuality, and
proposed five types.
a- Intertextuality: the relationship between two or more texts.
b- Paratextuality: the relationship between a text and its ‘paratext’ such as titles, preface, epigraphs, etc.
c- Architextuality: the relationship of a text with a genre or genres.
d- Metatextuality: it is the implicit or explicit criticism of a text by another text.
e- Hypotextuality (Genette’s word is hypertextuality): the relationship of a text with another one which
it transforms or modifies, for instance to tell an already-told story but change the winding up.

Concerning hypertextuality, the word has been coined by Riffaterre (1994),too, in his article in which he
contrasts intertextuality and hypertextuality, he defines the latter as follows:
[it] is derived from the text in a concerted effort to approximate the sum total of the
ideas, of the descriptive and narrative sign-systems, of the thematic material the text has
appropriated to its own purpose, and, finally, the text’s social, cultural, and historical
backgrounds...hypertextuality is a metalinguistic tool for the analysis and interpretation
of an existing text (p. 786).
Christiane Achour and Amina Bekkat (2002) question the comprehensiveness of a text that is full of
intertextuality. They argue that a given text remains comprehensive and keeps its structure- even if there is
intertextuality- depending on the way the original text is used. They propose three ways of doing so:
‘integration’, ‘collage’ and ‘citation’.
1- Integration as well consists of four ways:
a. Integration by installation, i.e. the use of quotation marks or italics.
 b. Integration by suggestion, i.e. by simple reference or mention of a name or title.
c. Integration by allusion using only signs.
d. Integration by absorption, i.e. the original text is melted in the new text, this is done
implicitly or it can be a case of plagiarism.
2- Collage: the intertext is no longer absorbed, but just pasted to the new text whether above or within
it.
3- Citation: ‘the citation is the reproduction of a statement pulled out of its original text (text1) in order
to be introduced in a receiving text (text2)’ (p. 112-117).
According to Lodge (1992), intertextuality “is not, or not necessarily, a merely decorative addition to a text,
but sometimes a crucial factor in its conception and composition” (p. 102). One may formulate it differently;
intertextuality helps to shape a work of art and not only to embellish it, therefore it determines form and
content.
References:
Achour, C. & Bekkat, A. (2002) Clefs pour la lecture des récits: convergences critiques II, Algérie : Editions
du Tell.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, (Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist
Trans). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Chandler, D. (1994). Semiotics for Beginners: Intertextuality, Retrieved
from: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html [2013]
Genette, G. (1992). The Architext: an Introduction, (J. E. Lewin Trans) California: California University
Press. (Original work published 1979, Seuil)
Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, (J. E. Lewin Trans). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (Original work published 1987, Seuil)
Iser, W. (1976) L’Acte de Lecture :Théorie de l’effet esthétique, Germany :Wilhelmfink Verlag.
Kerbrat-Orecchion I, C. (1983) La Connotation, 2nd Ed. Lyon: Press Universitaire.
Kristeva, J. (1986) The Kristeva Reader. Toril Moi (Ed), New York: Columbia University Press.
Lodge, D. (1992) The Art of Fiction, England: Penguin.
Plett, H. F. (ed). (1991) Intertextuality, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Riffaterre, M. (1980) Syllepsis in Critical Inquiry. Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 625-638. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Riffaterre, M. (1984) Intertextual Representation: On Mimesis as Interpretive Discourse in Critical Inquiry.
Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 141-162. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Riffaterre, M. (1994) Intertextuality vs. Hypertextuality in New Literary History.Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 779-
788. U.S.A: The Johns Hopkins University Press.