Intertextuality

Debates and Contexts

Mary Orr author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Published:9th Jun '03

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Intertextuality cover

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the idea of intertextuality and the debates surrounding it, focusing on the four key thinkers whose work has been central to these debates - Kristeva, Barthes, Bloom and Genette.


  • A comprehensive introduction to 'intertextuality', a term which describes the idea that meaning only exists between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates.
  • Focuses on the four key thinkers whose work has been central to these debates - Kristeva, Barthes, Bloom and Genette, guiding the reader through the original texts of each of these.
  • Of special importance is the author’s reading (and translation) of other parts of Kristeva’s Semeiotiké.
  • Takes a fresh approach to the rival French critics - Angenot, Derrida, Girard and Ricoeur - who also worked on intertexuality and tackles the 'language' of intertextuality, shining new light on some of the terminology most commonly associated with this concept.

"Mary Orr’s Intertextuality is a major achievement. A provocative analysis of the “canonization” of intertextuality and its main theorists, it is also a probing anatomization of intertextuality’s “others”, such as influence, imitation and quotation. Theoretically acute, and sensitive to metaphor as much as to meaning, this book illuminates papyri, Renaissance commonplace books and the internet as much as it reorientates our understanding of intertextuality. A “must read” for everyone interested in critical theory." Michael Worton, Vice-Provost and Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature, University College London


"While advancing a spirited defence of Kristeva, Mary Orr offers a knowledgeable theoretical discussion of intertextuality that throws light on interdiscursivity, interdisciplinarity and intercultural discourse. Intertextuality argues vigorously that hypertexts serve as a generational marker for younger critics and encourage not just a modish but a new way of viewing the translingual and transcultural imagination. In so doing, Professor Orr recuperates a revitalized metacritical consideration of influence, imitation, allusion and quotation in a fascinating book that should open criticism to an exciting future." Allan H. Pasco, Hall Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of Kansas

ISBN: 9780745606217

Dimensions: 234mm x 158mm x 24mm

Weight: 490g

256 pages