Intertextuality as a Problem of Culturology
Intertextuality as a Problem of Culturology

Summary/Abstract: The question of how texts interact within a cultural tradition and context is known as intertextuality.The term designates the various relationships that a given text may have with other texts and denotes the basic cultural awareness that is located in the text itself, when explicit or implied reference is made to another text, as well as in the person who interacts with the target text when s/he brings to the interaction previous texts and his or her experience with them. T. S. Eliot called this phenomenon “consciousness of the past” when he stated the relations between a poet and tradition as the frame within which any writer creates his works. Prior texts are considered as contributions to a code which makes possible the various effects of signification. Intertextuality thus becomes a designation of a text‘s participation in the discursive space of a culture; texts are considered to belong to a certain cultural code where no text has its meaning by itself; all texts signify something in relation to other texts. The question becomes more complicated in case of cultural differences between producer and receiver. Wide knowledge of alien cultural background is necessary to activate cultural codes of the reader to bring them in accordance with the codes used by the writer on the ground of finding associations and similarities between them.

• Details
• Contents