ABSTRACT
So much for the questions. Now for some tentative answers, culled from the genealogy drawn up in this collection. If you produce a text that “refers to” another text, rather than producing your own, you are
most likely to do so because you think the other text enjoys a prestige far greater than the prestige your own text might possibly aspire to. In other words, you invoke the authority of the text you represent. It may be a sobering thought that some of the masterpieces of world literature, such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote, profess to be translations of lost originals, i.e. that they refer to non-existent texts in order to derive some kind of legitimacy which, it is felt, would otherwise not be present to the same extent.
