Intertextuality Analysis

The Theory of Intertextuality Intertextuality a term derived from the Latin intertexto, meaning to intermingle while weaving was first used by French semiotician Julia Kristeva in essays such as ”Word, Dialogue, and Novel,” in the late sixties. In this essays, she parted ways with traditional notions of the author’s influence and the sources of text’s , asserting instead that the fabric of all signifying systems, from simple objects like table settings to much complex ones like poems are created by the manner in which they transform earlier signifying systems. Thus a literary work is the product of it’s relationship to other texts and to language structures itself rather than the product of a single author. ”Any text,” she argues, ”is

Indeed Osofisan’s sheer versatility, and frequent experimentation results in a new form of hybridization which makes his plays dynamic. The resultant hybridization in his works classifies his work in the new theatrical category the ’post colonial’ which transcends the old theatrical form of Soyinka and the other early playwrights. Osofisan’s theater as (Osundare 2002:68) points out is based upon “a marriage between traditionally African theatrical modes and Western dramaturgic strategies”. Osofisan radically configures the familiar history and myth in the light of contemporary realities to stress their dialectical dynamism to suit his revolutionary view on political force of oppression, injustice and corruption, and to reinterpret history and myth for our own self rediscovery. (Awodiya1993:47). Thus it is not farfetched that in writing the play Women of Owu which Osofisan himself terms a re-reading of the Trojan Women, a completely different but strangely familiar master piece is

Both Euripides Mythical Troy and Osofisan;s historical Owu are presented as autonomous city states under long time sieges- to which they eventually capitulated with the attendant loss of sovereignty, lives and liberty. While there is not much of a physical/mental connection by the readers /audience of todays drama to Euripides Troy, the same cannot be said of Osofisan’s Kingdom of Owu which provides unique references to a historic political reality; the Owu war. On an easily, accessible level of interpretation, both plays show the horrors of