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Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the theoretical principle that texts derive meaning through their relationships to other texts rather than in isolation. It views textual meaning as emerging through a network of references, allusions, quotations, and structural echoes.

Overview

Introduced by Julia Kristeva and drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism and polyphony, intertextuality posits that authors write within a matrix of prior discourse while readers construct meaning through these textual connections. This framework shifted critical focus from the autonomous authorial creator toward the interaction between texts and readers. It became central to structuralist and poststructuralist theory, contributing to critiques of original authorial authority such as Roland Barthes's formulation of the death of the author.

Why it matters

By framing meaning as relational and culturally situated rather than fixed or self-contained, intertextuality influenced interpretive methods across literary theory and cultural studies. It also provided a theoretical framework for analyzing authorship, originality, and citation across multiple text-based fields.

Related concepts

• SemioticslogicalIntertextuality provides conceptual grounding that helps explain Semiotics in this knowledge graph.
• HumanitieslogicalIntertextuality provides conceptual grounding that helps explain Humanities in this knowledge graph.
• Network TheoryconceptualIntertextuality offers a conceptual lens that clarifies assumptions and reasoning within Network Theory.
• Comparative LiteraturelogicalIntertextuality provides conceptual grounding that helps explain Comparative Literature in this knowledge graph.