ABSTRACT
An intertextual approach to studying media is one that is always aware of textual histories, connections, and resonances. This chapter discusses the intellectual history of intertextuality as a concept and offers several ways to find order in the chaos of intertextuality and to study it meaningfully. It focuses specifically on paratexts which is organizing and disciplining force, and another form of intertextuality. The task for the scholar working with intertextuality is to move beyond the simple act of noting that an intertext is present to instead study what that intertextuality does to meaning. A paratext is any entity that surrounds a work of art and is in some way subservient to that work or serves as a reference to and indicator of that work. Intertextual and paratextual analysis are ways to track ongoing flow of meaning, to see what meanings transform it, and what role they play in shifting or reinforcing the aesthetic or ideological place of that text.
