Intertextuality

I. What is Intertextuality?
Intertextuality (pronounced in-terr-text-yoo-a-lih-tee) is not a literary or rhetorical device, but rather a fact
about literary texts – the fact that they are all intimately interconnected. This applies to all texts: novels,
works of philosophy, newspaper articles, films, songs, paintings, etc. In order to understand intertextuality,
it’s crucial to understand this broad definition of the word “text.”

Every text is affected by all the texts that came before it, since those texts influenced the author’s thinking and
aesthetic choices. Remember: every text (again in the broadest sense) is intertextual.

II. Examples of Intertextuality

Example 1
Fan fiction is a great example of deliberate intertextuality. In fan fiction, authors enter the fictional worlds of
other authors and create their own stories. For example, a Lord of the Rings fan fiction might tell the story of
minor characters or add new characters to the world of Middle Earth. Sometimes, fan fiction becomes
extremely successful in its own right – 50 Shades of Grey was originally written as Twilight fan fiction.
Example 2
Martin Luther King’s writing was heavily influenced by the work of Mohandas Gandhi, especially in the area of
nonviolent resistance. Much of this intertextuality was deliberate, with King explicitly crediting Gandhi as one
of his influences. Scholars, however, have debated whether there might have been other aspects of Gandhi’s
writing, such as his aesthetic style, that also influenced King in a more latent way.

III. Types of Intertextuality

a. Deliberate Intertextuality

Sometimes, intertextuality is the result of an author’s choice. When a heavy metal artist makes references to
Norse mythology, or when a novelist draws on the works of Shakespeare as inspiration, these choices forge a
relationship between the old text and the new. We can call this deliberate intertextuality.
b. Latent Intertextuality
Even when an author isn’t deliberately employing intertextuality, though, intertextuality is still there. You
can’t escape it! Everything you’ve ever seen or read sticks somewhere in your memory and affects your
understanding of the world. They all contribute to building your specific worldview which, in turn,
determines how you write or create art. We can call this latent intertextuality.
Of course, since we can’t read an author’s mind, it’s not always easy to know the difference between
deliberate and latent intertextuality. We might find a similarity between two texts, but we have no way to
know whether it was deliberate or accidental unless the author tells us!
IV. The Importance of Intertextuality
Intertextuality shows how much a culture can influence its authors, even as the authors in turn influence the
culture. When you create a work of art, literature, or scholarship, you are inevitably influenced by everything
that you’ve seen or read up to that point. Even seemingly disparate fields, such as music and philosophy, can
exert a strong influence on each other through intertextuality – the philosopher Nietzsche, for example, was
heavily influenced by the early operas of Richard Wagner. Similarly, authors from different cultures and
historical periods can influence each other!

Intertextuality also shows how a similar cultural, religious, political, or moral ideology can be expressed in
very different ways through different cultural practices. For example, think about the way that art, music,
literature, and philosophy all changed in the aftermath of World War I. This earth-shattering event made
people feel like nothing was stable or certain, and this was reflected in all aspects of artistic and scholarly
pursuits. Post-war paintings were far more abstract and chaotic; post-war philosophy was nearly obsessed
with problems of evil and unpredictability; post-war music was more formless and atonal; post-war novels
questioned the rules of linear structure and chronology. Every aspect of the society was affected by the events
of this bloody war, and everything produced in its aftermath shows plenty of latent (and sometimes
deliberate) intertextuality.

V. Examples of Intertextuality in Literature

Example 1
James Joyce’s Ulysses was a deliberate retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, but transplanted out of ancient Greece
into modern-day Dublin. The various chapters in Joyce’s novel correspond to the adventures of Odysseus in
Homer’s epic poem. For Joyce, the point of this deliberate intertextuality was to show that ordinary people can
experience something heroic in their everyday lives.
Example 2
Steven Pressfield’s novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was adapted into a movie starring Will Smith,
was originally written as a re-telling of the Hindu epic Bhagavad Gita – the name “Bagger Vance” is supposed
to sound like “Bhagavad.” In the original Hindu epic, the god Krishna discusses the importance of
enlightenment and warrior virtues with Prince Arjuna – the novel/movie transplants this ancient story onto
the links of a golf course.

VI. Examples of Intertextuality in Pop Culture

Example 1

The actor Christopher Guest appeared in countless comedic movies in the 1980s, including such classics
as The Princess Bride (1987) and This Is Spinal Tap (1984). In the earlier film, he plays a heavy metal guitarist
whose amplifier, as we learn in one scene, can be turned up to 11 instead of the usual 10. Three years later, he
appeared on screen again playing a man with 6 fingers on his right hand – the character had 11 fingers instead
of 10. Fans have wondered ever since whether this was a deliberate reference to Spinal Tap or just an
accident: deliberate or latent intertextuality?
Example 2
Most people today have seen Star Wars, but many do not realize that it was intended to be an intertextual
work, based on the psychological theories of Joseph Campbell. Campbell wrote a book called Hero With a
Thousand Faces, which describes a single, universal form of hero-stories that appears in cultures all over the
world. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, wanted to explore this idea of the cross-cultural heroic ideal in
the character of Luke Skywalker.

VII. Related Terms

External Allusion
Allusion is a particularly common form of deliberate intertextuality – it’s when one text makes a deliberate,
but subtle, reference to another.
Citation
Citation is another common form of deliberate intertextuality – unlike allusion, it isn’t subtle at all! The point
of a citation is to acknowledge, loud and clear, that the author is borrowing an idea or phrase from someone
else. Citation is about giving credit to the original author.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is stealing another person’s work without giving them proper credit. In formal essays, it’s
important to cite your sources so that you won’t be guilty of plagiarism.
Sometimes the line between latent intertextuality and plagiarism is muddy. For example, imagine a young
comedian sees an older comedian on stage at a club. Years later, the young comedian uses a joke that he heard
that night – but he’s forgotten that he ever heard it! It was just lying buried in his memory all those years until
it came out when he was writing a new set of jokes. This is an accident, and it’s certainly latent intertextuality.
But it’s also plagiarism, even though it was accidental! That’s why it’s important to be very careful about using
other people’s texts in your own work.

How to Use Intertextuality

How you employ another text in your work depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want to
pay homage to a great author like Homer or Shakespeare? Then try re-staging their stories in a new setting. If,
on the other hand, you want to spoof those authors, then take whatever is silly or humorous about them and
exaggerate it in a parody.

Remember that intertextuality is not limited to texts of the same type. This is important since many of the most
sophisticated uses of deliberate intertextuality are those that cut across different mediums and styles. For
example, have you ever tried to paint a piece of music? Or write a story based on a philosophical idea? Getting
inspiration in this way is a great way to include intertextuality in your writing or art.

When to Use Intertextuality

Obviously, your writing and art will be intertextual whether you want them to be or not. Latent intertextuality
is inescapable! But when should you employ deliberate intertextuality?
Deliberate intertextuality has a place both in creative writing and formal essays. In creative writing, it’s a
great way to get inspiration for stories. You can draw on other authors’ stories and characters, or you can use
other art forms to get inspiration. Either way, when you make deliberate references to these other works you
are employing intertextuality.
In formal essays, deliberate intertextuality is a key part of the research process. When you cite a source, you
are taking a little chunk of someone else’s text and building it into your own argument. Obviously, you want
this intertextuality to be deliberate – if it’s latent, then that means you’re not citing your sources, which is very
poor form in an essay!