ABSTRACT
The term ‘intertextuality’ was coined by Julia Kristeva to indicate that a text (such as a novel, poem or historical document) is not a self-contained or autonomous entity, but is produced from other texts. The interpretation that a particular reader generates from a text will then depend on the recognition of the relationship of the given text to other texts. Thus, for example, a photograph of a politician in a newspaper may yield more meaning, or further levels of meaning, if it is interpreted, not simply as a representation of its subject, but rather through a frame constituted by other photographs of the same person (possibly in widely different situations), speeches made by him/her, newspaper reports and comments on him/her, and even cartoons lampooning the politician. Similarly, our understanding of David Lean’s film Great Expectations is influenced by our reading of Dickens’s novel, or conversely our understanding of the novel is now framed by having seen the film. Intertextuality may be understood as the thesis that no text exists outside its continuing interpretation and reinterpretation. There can then never be a definitive reading of a text, for each reading generates a new text, that itself becomes part of the frame within which the original text is interpreted. [AE] Further reading: Barthes 1974; Kristeva 1986a.
