The Intertextuality of Genres and the Intertextual Genres
The Intertextuality of Genres and the Intertextual Genres

Summary/Abstract: An anti-essentialist drive – a characteristic of recent genre criticism – has led to the conviction that genre is but a system of differences and that its matrix cannot be deduced from a particular set of apparently similar texts. According to such logic, genre identity is historically unstable, depending merely on how routines in the production and consumption of cultural products are being institutionalized or decomposed. The concept of intertextuality may prove advantageous for the explication of genre identity in a different way: genres exist and function as far as they are embedded in social practices that frame intertextual and meta-textual links/references to prototypical texts or textual series. Genres are classificatory categories and pragmatic schemes inscribed in practical knowledge and communicative competence. They are cognitive and pragmatic devices for intertextual pattern-matching. Texts or textual sets become generic prototypes by virtue of intertextual and meta-textual interaction. A text with intertextual reference actively takes part in the plurality of genre context; by citational links to various generic conventions, the author articulates the meaning and structure of the text and in this way influences the reader’s expectations and response.

• Details
• Contents