The First Trope: The Intertextuality In Literary Journalism

917 Words4 Pages
3.1. The First Trope: The Intertextual Literary journalists share an intensified awareness of and strategic focus on and significance of intertextuality. There is a common consensus among them that a meaningful world can always be projected not through a process of mythos-making but rather through the operation of various versions of the same story in a certain text or the interaction of the text itself with other texts within it. Intertextuality has particularly permeated the theoretical framework of literary journalism. Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin and Roland Barthes are among the major critics who seek to give a thorough definition of the term, “intertextuality.” According to Kristeva, “Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of inter-subjectivity, and poetic language is read as at least double” (66, Original italics). It is obvious that this definition aptly recapitulates the main characteristics of intertextuality. First, any text relates in a way or another to other texts constituting a mosaic. Second, any text enthralls other texts within itself in a process that results in a metamorphosis of the text itself to a new form. Third, this metamorphosis of the text creates a sense of doubling and infinitude that denies originality. Every text is an intertext in another text. Therefore, intertextuality can be regarded as “the most important tool” of

More about The First Trope: The Intertextuality In Literary Journalism