Intertextuality (Research in Text Theory)

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Library 0/ Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Intertextuality / edited by Heinrich F. Plett. (Research in text theory = Untersuchungen zur Texttheorie, ISSN 0179-4167; v. 15) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-89925-464-0 (U.S.: alk. paper) 1. Intertextuality. 2. Discourse analysis. 1. Plett, Heinrich F. 11. Series. PN98.I58157 1991 401'.41--dc20 91-28154 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Cataloging-in-Publication Data Intertextuality / ed. by Heinrich F. Plett. - Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 1991 (Research in text theory; Vol. 15) ISBN 3-11-011637-5 NE: Plett, Heinrich F. [Hrsg.]; GT

ISBN 3 11 0116375 ISSN 0179-4167 © Copyright 1991 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30

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Preface Since Julia Kristeva happened to invent the critical term "intertextualite" in 1967, an increasing number of studies seized upon it to propagate a new ideal of literature and literary criticism. They regularly link up with such critical schools as F rench poststructuralism and American deconstructio~ theory and their respective disciples, but also with a broad range of scholars who are fascinated by the new term and the many hermeneutic possibilities it seems to promise. Quite obviously the concept of intertextuality has received many different, if not contradictory interpretations. For some it represents the critical equivalent of postmodernism, for others the timeless constituent of any art; for some it marks the textual process as such, for others it is restricted to certain exacdy defined features in a text; for some it is an indispensible category, for others again it is altogether superfluous - as a term to which the ancient proverb of new wine in old botdes jusdy applies. The present volume cannot disentangle the manifold logical and conceptual controversies that emerged with the rise of this new critical category. On the contrary, what it intends is to display the variegated facets of intertexuality and their contribution to all kinds of texts, literary and non-literary. Thus no attempt whatsoever ,was made by the editor to homogenize the contributions to this book in order to achieve some kind of pretended harmony. In this respect it differs from similar publications which either assemble articles of one certain "school" or offer a preestablished design to which diverse authors endeavour, with greater or lesser success, to adapt their individual contributions. Here the purpose is to present a number of viewpoints, some more 'progressive' and some more 'conservative' in bias (with that relativity which is inherent in these nomenclatures), which prove essential to a better understanding of the intertextual approach. The structure of this book covers three successive stages which seem necessary for a comprehensive treatment of the subject-matter. Stage I deals with the foundations of intertextual theory and hence is concerned with its axioms, concepts, and methods of analysis. Stage 11 presents various components of an intertextual morphology which in its entirety forms a classificatory system allocating each intertextual constituent, ecriture or genre its exact structural position. Stage 111 highlights selected aspects of a (yet unwritten) his tory of intertextuality. The individual contributions to each of these stages attempt, each from its specific point of view, to consider already known facts in a new light or to open up innovative dimensions of critical insight. They thus provide stimuli for further intertextual activities. Essen,June 1991

H. F. P.

Table of Contents Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

v

I. Fundamentals of Intertextuality

Heinrich F. Plett Intertextualities .

3

Hans-Peter Mai Bypassing Intertextuality. Hermeneutics, Textual Practice, Hypertext

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Hans-George Ruprecht The Reconstruction of Intertextuality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

Gary A. Phillips Sign/Text/Differance. The Contribution of Intertextual Theory to Biblical Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

78

11. Structures of Intertextuality Wolfgang G. Müller Interfigurality. A Study on the Interdependence of Literary Figures.

101

Wolfgang Karrer Titles and Mottoes as Intertextual Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 UdoJ. Hebel Towards a Descriptive Poetics of Allusion. . . . . . . . . . . . .

135

Theodor Verweyen and Gunther Witting The Cento. A Form of Intertextuality from Montage to Parody .

165

111. Historical Aspects of Intertextuality Richard J. Schoeck 'In loco intertexantur'. Erasmus as Master of Intertextuality . . . . . . . . 181 DerekN. C. Wood Creative Indirection in Intertextual Space. Intertextuality in Milton's Samson Agonistes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

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Manfred Pfister How Postmodern is Intertextuality?

207

Linda Hutcheon The Politics of Postmodern Parody ,

225

I. Fundamentals of Intertextuality

Hans-Peter Mai Intertextual Theory - A Bibliography ,

, 237

Name Index,

,.251

Subject Index

, 261

HEINRICH F. PLETT

Intertextualities

inter-text. Using and repeating my own and others' earlier texts. Pulling the old poems thru the new, making the old lines a thread thru the eye of the words I am sewing. Sound and sense. The eeriness. Erin Moure, "the Acts", Furious (Toronto: Anansi, 1988)

1. Approaches to Intertextuality Currently, 'intertextuality' is a fashionable term, but almost everybody who uses it understands it somewhat differently. A host of publications has not succeeded in changing this situation. On the contrary: their increasing number has only added to the confusion. A quarter of a century after the term was coined in a rather casual manner (Kristeva 1967), it is actually starting to flourish. Originally conceived and used by a critical avantgarde as a form of protest against establisIied cultural and social values, it today serves even conservative literary scholars to exhibit their alleged modernity.

1.1. Attitudes Two groups of intertextualists appear: the progressives and the traditionalists. They are confronted by a phalanx of anti-intertextualists.

1.1.1. I ntertextualists The progressives try to cultivate and develop the revolutionary heritage of the originators of the new concept. Their representatives do not tire of quoting, paraphrasing and interpreting the writings of Bakhtin, Barthes, Kristeva, Derrida and other authorities. The ideas they propagate consist of an elaborate mixture ofMarxism and Freudianism, semiotics and philosophy. Therefore they are comprehensible only to elitist circles which are devoted exclusively to the study of the masters (Morson 1986; Worton & Still 1990). Although numericaBy small, this group of French origin has succeeded in spreading its activities internationaByand in setting up branches in aB the countries of the Western hemisphere. Regardless of whether they call themselves poststructuralists, decon-

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structionists, or postmodernists their basic aim is identical: to dislodge academic teaching from its traditional moorings. But the overthrow of the old orthodoxy, paradoxically not without a logic of its own, has only led to the establishment of a r:ew one. U niversities, publishing houses, and prestigious periodicals provide a wlde forum for the progressive approach. Yet the intimate knowledge of this intertextual discourse is limited to relatively few elitist circles. Presumably this is due to its basically philosophical orientation, but esoteric terminology also plays a role. This 'school' has never developed a comprehensible and teachable method of textual analysis. Its publications are marked by a strangely abstract quality, at a decided remove from reality. Such qualities not only impede their understandability but also surround their critical enterprise with an aura of mystery and exclusiveness. The traditionalists belong almost exclusively to the group of conventional literary scholars. They are not linguists or semioticians, let alone philosophers or sociologists. Alerted by the public re action to the work of poststructuralists and deconstructionists, these scholars asked themselves - after aperiod of cautious hesitation - whether the insights of the intertextuality debate could be applied profitably to their own concerns. Depending on their critical emphasis, their answers differ. Analytically inclined researchers have rediscovered quotation, allusion, and cento as intertextual forms. Genre theorists point out the ~ntertextuality of parody, travesty, and collage. Translation and media special1StS hold that the new approach can be of advantage to their respective fields of interest, too. Those scholars who are seriously concerned with theoretical advances in their discipline use 'intertextuality' as a general term to improve their methodological and terminological instruments. Thus they have succeeded, at least pardy, in making the new approach more applicable. Yet the pitfalls of such an endeavour are easy to see. Systematic interest easily leads to narrow thinking, en:phasis on termir:ology to batteries of scholastic nomenclatures, largely devOld of content. ThlS obstructs the dynamism of intertextual sign processes. It is replaced by a static phenomenological accountancy. It is even worse when scholars use the term 'intertextuality' without having critically examined the concept, only in order to appear up-to-date. 'Intertextuality' as a vogue word that is the negative side of the coin. .. 1.1.2. Anti-Intertextualists Consequendy, a third group emerges: the opposition to the new approach. Their basically negative attitude expresses itself in two different strategies of argumentation. The progressive, speculative on es are simply not understood; they are accused of subjectivity and irrationality and an utter lack of scientificity. Yet even stronger is the opposition tothe traditionalist, pragmatic variant. Anti-intertextualists do not tire of emphasizing that they themselves have worked intertextually all along. They hold that every branch of serious literary scholarship, especially comparative studies, which appear to be particularly weIl

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qualified, proceeds along these lines. Such a tradition, after all, harks back to the imitatio auctorum of Greco-Roman antiquity and to the typological allegoresis of Hellenism and patristicism, in short would appear to be a venerable practice of more than two thousand years. The change in terminology, it is argued, did not change anything substantially. Quite on the contrary: such a devious labelling only affects a progressiveness which does not actually exist. In this way, intertextuality is put through the critical mills, accused of being incomprehensible on the one hand and old wine in new botdes on the other. One opponent asserts that he does not und erstand anything, the other insists on having known it all the time. So many intertextualists, so many anti-intertextualists - that is the result. 1.2. Concepts What is an intertext? The answer to this question may be: a text between other tex~s. At least that is what an etymological view may suggest. Yet it depends enurely on the interpretation of the preposition 'between' as to how the term is explained. Several concepts are conceivable. It depends on their nature as to which constituents are said to make up an intertext and which not. Great importance must be accorded to the role of the author and the reader. Both (and several other communicative factors) actually make the intertext visible and co~municable. The important questions a scholar has to put in this regard are: WhlCh markers signalize an intertext ? - and: Which categories can help to describe it? Here a system of indicators and analytical categories becomes necessary. Such a system presupposes the existence of a comprehensive intertextual sign arsenal. As long as only a rudimentary understanding of such a repertoire exists some relevant properties of the phenomenon can merely be tentatively deduced. 1.2.1. Textvs.lntertext All intertexts are texts - that is what the latter half of the term suggests. Yet the revers al of this equation does not automatically imply that all texts are intertexts. In such a case, text and intertext would be identical and there would be no need for a distinguishing 'inter'. A text may be regarded as an autonomous sign structure, delimited and coherent. Its boundaries are indicated by its beginning, middIe and end, its coherence by the deliberately interrelated conjunction of its constituents. An intertext, on the other hand, is characterized by attributes that exceed it. It is not delimited, but de-limited, for its constituents refer to constituents of one or several other texts. Therefore it has a twofold coherence: an intratextual one which guarantees the immanent integrity of the text, and an intertextual one wh ich creates structural relations between itself and other texts. This twofüld coherence makes for the richness and complexity of the intertext, but also for its problematical status.

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H. F. Plett

Two extreme forms are imaginable, which could be expressed in the paradox: a text which is no intertext, and an intertext which is no text. Wh at does this mean? The text which has no interrelations with other texts at all realizes its autonomy perfectly. lt is self-sufficient, self-identical, a self-contained monadbut it is no Ion ger communicable. On the other hand, the intertext runs the risk of dissolving completely in its interrelations with other texts. In extreme cases it exchanges its internal coherence completely for an external one. Its total dissolution makes it relinquish its beginning, middle and end. lt loses its identity and disintegrates into numerous text particles which only bear an extrinsic reference. lt is doubtful that such a radical intertext is communicable at all. The examples mentioned are extremes. The assumed text per se and intertext per se are hardly possible in the reality of sign communication. But according to the premises of the definitions given above, the gradual participation of the text in intertextuality and of the intertext in textuality is possible. Thus, a scale of increasing and decreasing intertextuality can be postulated. In the case of negated intertextuality the idea of textual autonomy is dominant; in the case of intended intertextuality the governing principle is: "Every text is intertext" (Leitch 1983, 59). ' 1.2.2. Reductionism vs. Totality Given the fluctuations an intertext is subject to it seems almost hopeless to attempt to describe it systematically. Such an enterprise would presuppose that the intertextual flux can, at least intermittently, be arrested. Only then can a scholar gain a fixed position from which to develop categories, classifications, and methods to decode it. But such procedures fundamentally contravene the intentions of the origi~ators of the intertext; for they rigidly maintain the principIe that the intertext cannot be pinned down. In Roland Barthes's words (1986, 58): [... ] the Text is experienced only in an activity, in a production. It follows that the Text cannot stop(for example, at a library shelf); its constitutive moment is traversal (notably, it can traverse the work, several works).

As far as the intertext only exists in the actual communicative process - as a permanently oscillating indeterminabile - definite propositions ab out it cannot be made. It appears as part of a pragmatics which recognizes only the individual communicative act. This very attitude, though, implies a distinct reduction of the intertext, which cannot have been intended by its original proponents. For the intertext lends itself to more approaches than a pragmatics which relies on singular instances of reception. If one considers it as sign - analogous to those procedures which text linguists employ to constitute their object - the intertext can be analyzed in a threefold semiotic perspective (Morris 1938): syntactically, as based on relations between texts; pragmatically, as the relation between sender/receiver and intertext; and semantically, with respect to the referentiality of the intertext. Not a

Intertextualities

7

single semiotic perspective but only their combination constitutes the intertext as a whole. In this regard, the intertext is no different from any other sign, linguistic or non-linguistic. This means, on the other hand, that each semiotic perspective in isolation is an abstraction of the intertext, even a distortion. A scientific procedure which tries to avoid taking sides and following ideological imperatives must attempt to grasp its object from all angles. 1.2.3. Material vs. Structural Intertexts consist of signs. Signs are part of codes. Codes have two components: signs and rules. The signs represent the material, the rules the structural aspect of the code. There exist kinds of intertextuality analogous to the code components:

(1) material (particularizing) intertextuality - i.e. repetition of signs, (2) structural (generalizing) intertextuality - i.e. repetition of rules, (3) material-structural (particularizing-generalizing) intertextuality - i.e. repetition of signs and rules in two or more texts. Mostly, critics conceptualize intertextuality according to (1). The model case for the transport of signs from one text to another is the quotation. Yet transtextual factors are not only the code signs but also the code rules. The latter ones are the precondition for the constitution of classes and sub-classes of texts. Signs without rules have no structure, rules without signs remain abstract. Therefore the third type of intertextuality is a very common occurrence, even if it is often ignored. One of many illustrative examples of the three types of intertextuality is the elocutionary mode of Ciceronianism. The material aspect of this intertextuality is based on the lexicon of Cicero's complete works, regardless of wh ether it exists in primary form (the sources themselves) or as secondary derivations (dictionaries, thesauri, computer-generated concordances). The structural intertextuality of Ciceronianism is laid down in prescriptive stylistic gramm ars which contain meticulous rules for the composition of specific cola, lexematic collocations, or clausulae. Yet it stands to reason that Cicero's inventory of material signs cannot be employed without regard to the respective stylistic grammar, and vice versa - the one depends on the other. That is why the mixed type of intertextuality is most common in Ciceronianism. The reference to texts is supplemented by a systematic reference and thus combines material and structural intertextuality. 1.3. Decisions An intertextual theory bent on clarity and precision has to make methodological decisions which restrict the field of inquiry. A total semiosis of the intertext will remain an ideal objective and hence fall short of ever being put into practice. Thus, the exclusion of certain aspects will become necessary. One such exclu-

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reproduced in a subsequent text. Another feature of the quotation is its segmental c?aracter, for, as a rule, the pre-text is not reproduced in its entirety, but only partlally, as pars pro toto. It follows, thirdly, that the quotation is essentially never self-sufficient, but represents a derivative textual segment. As such it, fourthly, does not constitute an organic part of the text, but a removable alien element, or, to put it differendy, an improprie-segment replacing a hypothetical p.roprie-segment. To sum up these features in a provisio.nal definition: A quotation repeats a segment derived from apre-text within a subsequent text, where it replaces a proprie-segment.

sion will have to concern the semantic dimension of intertextuality. Its specificity is that the text referent is not external reality but only another text referent. As complex as this semiotic dimension appears to be, it seems to be of secondary importance to the problem of intertextuality as such. Another exclusion concerns those subjective pragmatical aspects which cannot be scientifically controlled. This implies the dismissal of an intertextual concept which recurs to individual associations and vague deja lu impressions. Therefore two analytical dimensions remain: syntactics and pragmatics. They can be equated with Saussure's concepts of langue and parole and Chomsky's theorems of competence and performance. Both enable the construction of models which constitute the framework for intertextuality. The syntactical model prefigures the possibilities of an intertextual grammar, the pragmatical one those of intertextual communication.

2.1.1. Quantity 'Yith regard to quantity, quotations show a great variability. They usually conSISt of morphological or syntactic units, include more rarely larger sections of texts, or, in an exceptional case, even the complete pre-text. Some tides of wellknown literary works contain word or sentence quotations: John Barth's The Sot-Weed-Factor repeats the tide of a satirical poem by Ebenezer Cooke, AIdous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza refers to a segment of a line fromJohn Milton's Samson Agonistes (41), and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead quotes a line from Hamlet (Y.2.376).

2. An Intertextual Case Study: the Quotation The whole field of intertextual phenomena is so large that it is hard to choose one which lends itself to a syntactical and a pragmatical semiosis. By choosing the quotation we opt for an intertextual unit which is weIl known outside of scholarly discourse, too. Priests are said to 'quote' passages from the Bible, but also composers from a symphony or painters from a picture. This indicates that the quotation represents a material kind of intertextuality. Not a structural rule, but a textual sign is being reproduce~.. The material quality of this textual sign can be verbal as weIl as non-verbal. As can be seen from these few remarks the quotation is obviously made up of a rather specific cluster of features, which makes it an almost ideal object for an intertextual case study (Plett 1988).

2.1.2. cQuality So far we have tacidy assumed that while passing from the original to the target text, qbotations remain unchanged. This assumption, however, requires some modifications. It is true that scientific or judicial texts should quote as accurately as possible, i.e. without altering the pre-text. Poetic texts, on the contrary, show their specific nature in that they do not integrate prefabricated textual elements without alterations, but rather reshape them and supply them with new meanings .. For this reason, it is necessary to examine the quotation with respect to its quahty. To do so requires the following distinction. The form we usually call quotation possesses a twofold existence, on the one hand as a segment of the pretextT2(=Q2)' on the other as a segment of the quotation text Tl (=QI)' QI = Q2 signifies intertextual identity, QI =l= Q2 intertextual deviation. Intertextual deviations, like intratextual deviations, can be described in a secondary grammar. Two levels have to be distinguished here: expression and content, or, to use a different terminology, surface and deep structure. The surface structure of citational deviations can be described in terms of transformations. These are basically identical with the types of transformations used in stylistic theory and generative transformational grammar, the only difference being that their present field of application is defined in intertextual terms. The respective transformations are addition, subtraction, substitution, permutation, and repetition (Plett 1979, 143-149). They refer to linguistic units of varying length: phonological or morphological, syntactic or textual ones. An example taken from Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley may illustrate the

2.1. The Grammar of Quotation A grammar of quotation must take into account the following basic structural elements: 1. the quotation text (Tl), i.e. the text in which the quotation occurs (= target text); 2. the pre-text (T2 ), i.e. the text from which the quotation is taken (= source text); 3. the quotation proper (Q). These elements require a detailed analysis, the guiding principles of which will be the quantity, quality, distribution, frequency, interference, and markers of quotations. The focus of the present investigation will be the verbal quotation occurring in verbal texts. A quotation reveals several unmistakable characteristics which distinguish it as such. Its most obvious feature probably is intertextual repetition: apre-text is

j

I

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In tertextuali ties

H. F. Piett

transformational variations of a given pre-text. The quotation text in question comprises the two lines Died same, pro patria, non "duke" non et "decor",

which split up and rearrange Horace's well-known pre-text line Duke et decorum est pro patria mari (carm. III.2.12).

Pound's lines illustrate the following intertextual operations: subtraction of the Latin verbal phrase "est [... ] mori" and its substitution by the English ve~b "died", subtraction of the terminal morpheme {-um} in "decorum", syntacuc permutation of the pre-text, addition and repetition .of the negation. "non" ~is­ sing in Horace. These operations involve morphological and syntacuc text umts. An intersegmental graphemic addition is effected by the inverted commas. Reviewing these rather complex transformational procedures, one realizes that their results - the quotations - may be designated by classical rhetorical nomenclatures, e.g. ellipsis, apocope, anastrophe. These rhetorical figures, then, do not indicate deviations within a text, but such as exist between texts Oenny 1976). An approach to the aspects of the intertextual deep structure of quotations allows a comparison to rhetoric as well. The procedure of quoting resembles that of tropification, since the resulting text always lends itself to two interpretations, namely a literal and a non-literal one. For this reason a quotation text can be regarded as a "dual sign" (Riffaterre 1980), since it admits of a proprie as well as of one or more improprie readings. The title of G. B. Shaw's Arms and the Man, for instance, refers in its literal (primary) sense directly to the events of the play, whereas its additional (secondary) sense derives from the fact that it is also a (translated) quotation of the initialline of Virgil's Aeneid. Thus, as a general rule, a quotation does not only include a single (isotopic) but two or more (polyisotopic) levels of meaning that need to be interrelated by the recipient. This interrelationship, or, to use Bakhtin's term (1981), this "dialogue" extends well beyond the quoted element and covers its primary and secondary contexts ~s well. The more quotations are encoded in a poetical text, the more complex will be its intertextual deep structure, the more polyphonic the textual dialogue.

2.1.3. Distribution In addition to quantity and quality two further criteria are relevant for the structure of the quotation: distribution and frequency. These are characteristics of the quotation which, when taken by themselves, seem relatively simple, but develop a high degree of complexity, when correlated with other features. As both distribution and frequency have often implicitly been referred to in the present investigation, they will be treated only briefly here. The .distributi.o~ of the quotation can be described with reference to the most promment posluons of the quotation text: beginning, end, middle. The initial position is identical

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with the tide, the motto or the first sentence, the final position can be a concluding aphorism. That these structural positions, when furnished with quotations, are important for the understanding of the entire work, is illustrated by T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, where tide, motto and concluding formula represent quotations (pre-texts: Malory, Petronius, the Upanishads). The middle position in a text (whatever this may be) allows of such a broad range of quotational variants that it is pointless here to go into further details.

2.1.4. Frequency

If only few quotations occur within a text, their impact on its structure and meaning may be comparatively insignificant. In this case the determining influence of the quotational conte1xt proves stronger than that of the quotations themselves. The situation, however, changes, when the pre-text interpolations increase in frequency. In that case the influence of the context diminishes in proportion. The final stage in such a development is reached with a text completely compounded of quotations. At this point a context in the sense of an original creation no longer exists. Its part is taken over by the quotations preceding and following each quotation. As there is a multiplication of quotations, so there is also a multiplication of contexts. The structural result of this procedure can be termed collage, the procedure itself montage (Klotz 1976).

2.1.5. Interference A quotation is always embedded in two contexts: the quotation-text context Cl and the pre-text context C 2 • As these contexts are per definitionem non-identical, every quotation means a conflict between the quotation and its new context. This conflict may be described as interference. To illustrate interferential phenomena, we shall single out the code as an appropriate criterion. An interference of codes takes place, when quotation and context Cl differ with regard to language, dialect, sociolect, register, spelling, prosody etc. In these cases we speak of interlingual, diatopic, diastratic, diatypic, graphemic, prosodical etc. interference. Codal interferences of the interlingual and graphemic kinds are often employed in Ezra Pound's Cantos, where quotations from foreign literatures are rendered in the characters of their originallanguages, e.g. in Greek letters or Chinese ideograms. Sometimes foreign language quotations are translated into English, sometimes Chinese ideograms are reproduced in Latin letters. These are cases of "transcoding" (Eco 1976). Every transcoding procedure signifies an assimilation of the quotation to its new context and hence a diminution of quotational interferences.

2.1.6. Markers A gramm~r of quotation cannot work without a system of markers which indicate the occurence of quotations within the text. These markers are of a deictic

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nature, for they make visible the seams between quotation and context (Cl)' There are overt and covert seams, hence there exist overt and covert quotations, depending on whether the author wishes to stress or to disguise the interference of "frame" and "inset" (Sternberg 1982). The number and kind of textual signals vary accordingly. Provided a scale of decreasing distinctness is set up, quotation markers are either explicit, implicit or simply non-existent. Misleading or pseudo-markers constitute a special class that modifies the first and second categories.· . Explicit markers indicate a quotation directly, either by aperformatlve verb like "I quote" or a standardized formula like "quote" - "unquote" or even by naming the source directly. As opposed to these intratextual markers, notes, marginal glosses, source indices, prefaces and postscripts as weH as commentaries are located outside the text proper. If these are jointly published with the text, maybe even as an integral part of it, they gain the status of a sub text. Implicit markers are either features inherent in or added to the quotation. As features added, they may appear, on the phonologicallevel, as pauses before and after the quotation or, on the graphemic level, as inverted commas, colons, italics or empty spaces. They are, however, ambiguous in so far as they do not only signal quotations but other textual features as weIl (for instance, inverted commas also signal irony). As features inherent in the quotation itself implicit markers become effective only in such cases when a codal interference exists between the quotation and its context. In spite of this restriction, however, an even stronger ambivalence can be imputed to this type of implicit markers. For differences of the kind described mayaiso refer to non-quotational characteristics of poetical texts, when, for instance, a play includes speakers of dialects or foreign languages such as the Welshman Fluellen in Shakespeare's Henry Vor the French lieutnant Riccaut de la Marliniere in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm. Because of the ambiguous ·~l.ature of implicit quotation markers, the explicit ones alone seem suited to indicate a quotation in a reliable manner. But even they have to be considered with caution, for the commentary may be a pseudo-commentary, and the quotation marked as such may turn out a pseudo-quotation (BoIler & George 1989). Consequently, it is up to the recipient's "quotation competence" to decide whether or not a quotation is a quotation: ,!,he q~otat~o~ competence is especially challenged when a text lacks both exphClt and ImphClt quotation markers. In this case the quotational character of a linguistic segment only emerges on the basis of a "pragmatic presupposition" (Culler 1976; Leps 1979-1980), which, besides the communicating individual, includes the concrete evidence of the pre-text as well.

2.2. The Pragmatics of Quotation The remarks made in the first part have led the argument from grammar to pragmatics. In the following exploration, pragmatics signifies the communication of quotations. This includes manifold factors: sender, receiver, code, place,

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time, medium, function etc. For the sake of simplicity, these factors will be subsumed under two central aspects: 1. the sender as point of departure for functional modes of quotations and 2. the receiver (recipient) as point of departure for perceptional modes of quotations. Although these aspects do not cover the pragmatics of quotation entirely, they are suited to illuminate some of its essential features.

2.2.1. Functional Modes

If asender, i.e. a speaker or writer, makes use of a quotation, he does so not just arbitrarily but with certain intentions. These intentions are in their turn modified by the conventions of the chosen communicative situation. As there are more or less conventionalized communicative situations, it follows that there are more or less conventionalized quotational functions, too. Stefan Morawski (1970) utilizes this insight in his typology of quotational functions which he outlines in terms of a scale of decreasing normative forces. He distinguishes three functions of the quotation: an authoritative, an erudite, and an ornamental one. These functional types are evidently realized in non-literary texts but they unquestionably occur in literary texts as well. The following discussion will begin with Morawski' s typology and then proceed to delineate a few functional aspects of the poetic quotation.

2.2.1.1. The Authoritative Quotation The authoritative quotation 9ccurs in communicative situations that impose on the sender an obligation to quote. Such communicative situations are closely attached to social institutions ; hence the quotation act assurnes a ritualized character. Illustrative examples are sacral arid legal proceedings, where priests and preachers, judges and lawyers endorse their reasoning by quotations from the Bible or the Law, respectively. Within their scope of validity, the authority claimed for such books admits of no doubts about their legitimacy. They maintain the status of "holy books", whether it be the Bible or the Koran, the Corpus Iuris Civilis or the Civil Code, or, to venture into the field of political doctrine, the works of Marx, Engels and Mao Tse-tung (hence the term "Mao Bible"). Consequently, every subsequent reference text (e.g. Biblical commentaries) and every quotation taken from them is subject to a very narrow range of application, usuaHy one of an exegetical character. When a quotation in its claim to authority is not questioned at all, its function mayaiso be regarded as being "ideological" .

2.2.1.2. The Erudite Quotation The erudite quotation mainly occurs in scientific texts that refer to other scientific texts. Like the theological quotation, it may be used to rely on the authority of incontestable knowledge. It differs, however, from the authoritative quota-

14

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H. F. Plett

tion in so far as it may question its validity as well. Whereas the authoritative quotation demands an affirmative contextualization, the erudite quotation is open to a discussion of the pros and cons. It allows of more than one point of view, even of its refutation. As for the plurality of functions it is likely to adopt, this quotation mayaiso be termed "argumentative".

2.2.1.3. The Ornamental Quotation The ornamental quotation is even less subordinate to the normative forces of a communicative situation. Its spectrum of application is broad, for it includes numerous kinds of occasional discourse: letters, advertisements, ceremonial addresses, obituaries, feuilletons, essays. If in these texts the ornamental quotations are obliterated altogether, the communicative act does not fail, since the basic information is preserved. This is due to the fact that ornamental quotations only serve as decorative embellishments added to the substance of a text. Hence the functional relation between text and quotation undergoes a decisive change: "Whereas in the case of the authoritative function the text serves the quotation, here the arrangement is the reverse" (Morawski 1970, 696). Being an aesthetic stimulus for the recipient's delight, the ornamental quotation shows the dosest affinity to the poetic quotation. In this respect it differs remarkably from the ideological sway of the authoritative quotation and the persuasive force of the erudite quotation.

15

The author who re-employs fragments from poetic (pre-)texts in his own poetic text does so with certain intentions. Any statement of a general nature is, however, difficult, since it means a curtailment of possible alternatives. A negative common cienominator could be that the author's primary purpose is not to bring his audience to an immediate confrontation with reality, but only with mirrors of reality, i.e.literature - sometimes more sometimes less, depending on the amount of quotations. He withdraws, to use Fredric Jameson's (1972) wellknown book-title, into the "prison-house of language". Hence literary texts with a high quotation frequency embody the following paradox: The reality of literature made up of literature is -literature. There is no better illustration of this than the exceptional case of a quotatiön-within-a-quotation in a poetic text (Smirnov 1983) which denotes a fictional reality thrice removed from factual reality.

2.2.2. Perceptional Modes The receiver, i.e. the listener or reader, who comes across a quotation text, may either notice the quotations or he may not. If he overlooks them, the text miss es its purpose which consists in opening up dialogues between pre-texts and quotation texts. The culprit for such an aesthetic failure cannot easily be identified. Part of the responsibility lies with the author who should feel obliged to supply the quotations with markers in such a way that their twofold encoding is clearly made apparent. In his book Literary Quotation and Allusion E. E. Kellett (1969, 3) writes to this effect:

2.2.1.4. The Poetic Quotation As compared to the non-poetic types of quotation, the poetic quotation is characterized by its lack of an immediate practical purpose. Such a purpose can, however, be achieved, whena politician, a journalist or a salesman employs a poetic quotation in a non-poetic text. In this case the poetic quotation is depoeticized, i.e. divested of its autotelic function and invested with the practical function of the respective quotation context. On the other hand, areversal of this procedure takes place when a non-poetic quotation is inserted in a poetic discourse. In that case the quotation is poeticized, i.e. released from the constraints of an immediate practical usefulness and transferred to astate of "purposiveness without purpose" which causes "disinterested satisfaction"(Kant). L Instances of this method are to be found in Laurence Sterne' s Tristram Shandy which contains quotations from treatises of medicine (Robert Burton) and philosophy aohn Locke) and even from a medieval formula of excommunication (Bishop Ernulphus of Rochester). A modern development are the "found poems" of the Canadian author John Robert Colombo consisting entirely of quotations from non-literary texts such as newspaper reports, political speeches, dictionary entries etc. Both the poeticizing and the de-poeticizing of a quotation represent functional shifts that are conditioned by the ruling influence of the quotation context.

Here is a man who steals, and boasts of his thefts: he covers his walls with paintings, and openly pro claims they are taken from aNational Gallery. He is not like the Spartan boy who stole and gained glory if undetected: he desires to be detected, and deliberately leaves clues to guide his pursuers to their prey.

Authors like James Joyce and Arno Schmidt, however, do not always adhere to this maxim, but conceal their quotations so carefully that hosts of books and artides have been written on Joyce and, in the case of Schmidt, a "deciphering syndicate" has been endeavouring for years to verify even remote quotations and allusions in his novels. Literature of this kind has apoeta doctus as its author and requires a litteratus doctus as its recipient.

2.2.2.1. Memory Depositories For this reason both must be provided with a sufficient knowledge of literary history . This knowledge is stored in three types of memory depositories which mark three stages in the progress of civilization: 1. individual, 2. printed, and 3. electronic. Individual memory forms the basis of the tradition of oral literature in preliterate societies. With the advent of the Gutenberg era individual memory was supplemented though not superseded by printed memory (written memory being just an intermediate stage in the development) (Compagnon

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1979,233-356; Ong 1982). This type of memory claims the advantage of being extrapersonal and hence susceptible to a larger amount of literary experience. The printed quotation storehouses were called Commonplace Books, Thesauri, Collectanea, Polyanthea; their history can be traced up to Büchmann's Geflügelte Worte and The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. The first successful author in this field was Erasmus; his Adagia, Apophthegmata and Parabolae were among the bestsellers of their century. In the electronic age the computer data bases take over the part of the printed information holders. They provide man kind with the prospect of an almost infinite enlargement of their collective (quotational) memory. This development, however, does not make the individual memory superfluous, for it still represents the only instrument of decoding quotations in oral communication.

Intertextuali ties

17

adagia and aphorisms. That has been happening to quotations for centuries. The result very often is that being devoid of their pre-texts they become wo rn out like "dead metaphors". 'For this reason they have to be revitalized by specific ("defamiliarizing") techniques in order to regain their semantic vigour. N evertheless the quotation text will lack much of the friction that originates from a collision of Cl and C 2 (now no longer existing). The decline in spontaneity may even affect apre-text not yet forgotten as is testified by Hamlet's soliloquy beginning with the line "To be or not to be that is the question" (Bloomfield 1976). The result is that this speech belongs to the texts most often parodied in world literature. Hence there is great danger that the humorization encroaches on the source of the quotation as well. Meaninglessness and ridicule - these are the tributes that a quotation frequently has to pay for its farne.

2.2.2.2. Stages of Perception The reception of quotation texts does not proceed evenly but is retarded again and again by "quotation thresholds". Quotations constitute reception obstacles which impede the process of text communication. The seams between the quotation and its context do not only endanger the homogeneity of the literary structure,.but also the unity of perception. The perception is diverted by something alien and unexpected which requires integration. Put in a simple scheme, the reception of quotations proceeds in three stages:

Stage 1: Disintegration of the perceptional continuum (quotation context) by the intrusion of an alien element (quotation); Stage 2: Verification (and interpretation) of the alien element (quotation) by a digression into "text archaeology" (pre-text); Stage 3: Reintegration of the alien element (quotation) and resumption of the perceptional continuum (quotation context) on an advanced (enriched) level of awareness.

If the quotation remains unnoticed, this sequence of perceptional stages is not put into operation at all. If the quotation is not verified, stages 2 and 3 are not accomplished. If the quotation cannot be integrated in the text, stage 3 has to be dismissed. In the two latter cases the process of poetic perception comes to a halt in the stage of alienation. The disruption of the communicative process leaves the quotation text in a condition of fragmentation that no Ion ger deserves the Aristotelian epithet of "hen kai h610n". The unity of the work of art then ceases to exist. Such a failure may even not be due to the recipient's perceptional incapacity but sometimes concurs with the author's artistic intentions.

3. Intertextualities

Charles Grivel's dictum "11 n'est de texte que d'intertexte" (1982, 240) claims that no text exists in isolation but is always connected to a 'universe of texts' (Grivel1978). Whenever a new text comes into being it relates to previous texts and in its turn becomes the precursor of subsequent texts. What can be said for the production of texts also applies to their reception. No hermeneutic act can consider a single text in isolation. Rather it is an experience with a retrospective as well as a prospective dimension. This means for the text: it is an intertext, i.e. simultaneously post-text and pre-text. Stephen Heath perceives a continual process of transformation at work: "Far from being the unique creation of the author as originating source, every text is always (an)other textes) that it remakes, comments, displaces, prolongs, reassumes." (1972,24) Consequently, every text is always subjected to a process of repetition. It exists as a perennial interplay between identity and difference. That constitutes its intertextuality.

3.1. Repetition

If .intertexts are based on the principle of repetition, the following questions anse: 1. Which kind of repetition is sufficient to ensure "intertextual identity" (Miller 1985)? 2. Who decides whether arepetition is an intertextual one? 3. To which evaluative conventions is an intertextual repetition subjected? All these questions cannot be answered exhaustively here.

2.2.2.3. Stagnation

If texts become so well known that they develop into storehouses of quotations, the user of these quotations may easily lose sight of their original contexts. The quotations then become autonomous language units and assurne the status of

3.1.1. Choices Which kind of repetition constitutes a text as an intertextual one? - An answer to this question may start from a consideration of the criteria quantity, quality, and

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H. F. Plett

frequency. These we find in the gramm ar of quotation, too, where they evidendy pose no problem. Yet in special cases certain problems may arise. Thus it is questionable whether the repetition of a single grapheme - as in George Tabori's M which refers to Euripides's Medea - is already a quotation. If this is an instance of minimal identity, the repetition of a whole text - e.g. in Samuel Beckett's Play - constitutes a maximal one. Is this still intertextuality or just repetition plain and simple? Proceeding to qualitative criteria, the difficulties even increase. For one could hold that the material identity of the signs employed - e.g., the English language - already provides sufficient conditions to enable us to speak of intertextuality. If this qualitative level seems to be hardly acceptable, how much more doubtful is the attempt of some critics to demonstrate that reality as such is a general text or macro(inter)text. Here a nature of the sign is presupposed which, in the last resort, has its foundations in the medieval concept of mundus symbolicus. A concept of this kind is, however, totally irreconcilable with the notion of the arbitrariness of the sign in modern semiotics. As for the third criterion, frequency, it remains to decide which number of repetitions of a specific size and quality make a text an intertext: one, several, multiple? The same criterion mayaiso help to decide whether, relative to the quantity of intertexts, a literary period can be labelled 'intertextual' or 'antiintertextual'. All these are questions which can only be answered by a normative agency. But all conceivable answers will finally barely hide unresolvable aporias.

3.1.2. Norms The normative agency which ha~ to decide which repetition is intertextual and which is not can be localized in different kinds of senders/receivers. The subjective type is the productive/receptive individual whose mnemonic ars combinatoria is a source of continual intertextualities. But this agency does not necessarily distinguish between signs and their repetition but actually res orts to a fluctuating macro(inter)text of freely available signifiers. The intertextual norm is based in this case on one's personal experience. The result is often co mbinatorial arbitrariness. To limit it one could devise - analogous to Riffaterre's 'archilecteur' (1971) - an 'archi-intertextualist' who would embrace the intertextual experiences of all past senders/receivers. Yet this empirical reconstruction of a trans-individual intertextualist will be rather complicated as it is not clear whether he should be an educated person or somebody with an average knowledge. A third possibility would be the construction of an 'ideal speakerlhearer' who disregards each concrete intertextual instance. He would operate like an electronic intertext generator which displays every intertextual repetition according to specific instructions. Here one could object that his restriction to the competence level prevents hirn from doing justice to individual intertextual performances. To sum up, there are three conceivable administrators who could define the intertextual norm: (1) the individual, (2) the empirical, and (3) the ideal intertextualist. They are tied to three concepts: (1) subjective impression-

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19

ism, (2) historical positivism, and (3) generative automatism. Each has its advantages and dis advantages which need not be elaborated here in detail.

3.1.3. Evaluations Intertextuality d?es not exist in a value-free realm but is dependent on reigning cultural conventIons. These result, among other things, in four evaluative attitudes: affirmation, negation, inversion, relativity. Affirmative intertextuality proceeds fr?m the assumption that intertextual repetition is a positive feature of the .r:spe~tI:e text. The imitatio veterum ideal of classicist poetics realizes this POSltlO~ m ItS purest form. According to it, the aesthetic quality of a text is determmed by the degree to which it re-employs the structural rules and pretex~s of the classical canon - with the aim, though, of excelling the ancients in thelr craft. Negative intertextuality is strictly opposed to this attitude, either explicidy or implicidy. In the wake of romanticism, it insists on the inalienable origi?ality of texts, their separateness in relation to any other texts. The ultimate ~oal ~s a s~lf-conta~ned, intertext-free text which - as conceived by some generative lmgmsts - has ItS own grammar and its own vocabulary. A realization of this postulate, though, seems hardly possible. Even Wordsworth and Mallarme c.oul~ not do without models. Inverted intertextuality is a more ludic type. We fmd It most. conspicuously in parody, which transposes 'low' topics, personages, motIfs and actions into a 'high' style, and in travesty, which, contrarily, transposes 'high' topics, personages, motifs and actions into a 'low' style. Such pro~edures.engend~r a. reappraisal of values and hence participate both in affirmative and m ~egatlve mtertextuality. If fixed conventions cease to exist and give way to a multltude of equally valid positions, positive and negative evaluation are both immaterial. Anything can be combined with anything. This is the field ~f r~lativistic i~tertextuality: Its manifestations are collage and montage, ques~lOmng everyt~mg, even thelr own status. We find this position of a positionless ~ntertex~ual~ty m certain aspects of modernism but even more so in postmodernIS~, WhlCh IS a per.ennial process of self-intertextualization. A prime example of ~hls.phe~omen~n IS Tom Stoppard's Travesties, its tide (plural!) already indicatmg I~S dnft. ThlS last type rounds up a range of evaluative attitudes which prove that mtertextual repetition is not only a stylistic means and method of text cons~itution but also communicates a specific view of the referent. Similar perspectIves have already been formulated in rhetoric, poetics and aesthetics.

3.2. Transformations !n our cont:xt transformations are such procedures as trans form textuality into mtertextuahty. They were already apparent in the discussion of the quotation (2.1.2.), even if subordinate to grammatical criteria. Here the emphasis will be reversed. It follows that the criteria mentioned cannot be taken into consideratio~ in every case. The emphasis is less on a segmental notion of intertextualityas m the case of the quotation - than on a holistic one. Texts refer to texts,

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H. F. Piett

structures refer to structures. The sign character of texts will be defined extensively.lt will comprise not only verbal but also non-verbal signifiers.

3.2.1. Substitution This type of transformation is most frequent. It comprises signs and structures and engenders a multitude of possible combinations. Sign substitution can occur in identical or in different sign dasses. Structural substitution functions analogously.

3.2.1.1. Medial Substitution Signs of different dass es are, for instance, verbal, visual, acoustic. As a consequence a substitutional paradigm of six sign transfers becomes possible: (1) linguistic => visual signs example: Shakespeare's plays => Henry Fuseli's illustrations of them (2) linguistic => acoustic signs example: Goethe's Faust => Franz Liszt's Eine Faust-Symphonie. In drei Charakterbildern (nach Goethe) (3) visual => linguistic signs example: 77 pictures by Rene Magritte => Alain Robbe-Grillet's novel La belle captive (4) visual => acoustic signs example: pictures by Victor Hartmann => Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition ' (5) acoustic => linguistic signs example: Beethoven's Kreutzersonate => Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata (6) acoustic => visual signs example: Maurice Ravel's Bolero => Maurice Bejart's ballet Bolero As is suggested by the variety of the illustrations, each dass of signs allows of a division into subdasses, e.g. the visual dass can be divided into static and moving, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, monochrome and polychrome pictures. At the same time the examples indicate how difficult it is to effect and to describe such sign transfers. Usually it is not single signifiers which are exchanged for other signifiers but themes, motifs, scenes or even moods of a pretext which take shape in a different medium. Thus it seems justifiable to call this kind of intertextuality intermediality. The respective problems can only be solved within the framework of a general semiotics and media science which would have to investigate the convertibility of signs and their accommodation in different media.

3.2.1.2. Linguistic Substitution Verbal signs which can replace each other come from different subdasses. The result of such operations is 'translation' in a wider sense - for instance, from

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21

standard speech (e.g., Standard English) into a foreign language (e.g., High German), an earlier linguistic stage (e.g., Old English), a regional dialect (e.g., Welsh English), a sociolect (e.g., the language of youth culture), a specific linguistic register (e.g., colloquial), etc. Examples of an interlingual transformation are the "English Homer" by Alexander Pope and the "German Shakespeare" by Schlegel, Tieck and Baudissin. A comprehensive cQrpus of interlingual, diachronic and diatopic transformations exists of Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz. This category comprises all kinds of linguistic actualization, transstylization or poetization (Genette 1982). Details can be found in grammars, handbooks of style, reference works and other utilities. They dearly show that such 'translations' consist not only in the substitution of signs but in the substitution of structures as well. Both kinds of transformation go hand in hand. This is particularly obvious in· the text type of the paraphrase (Nolan 1970; Fuchs 1982). The paraphrase of archaic, poetic or medical texts requires more than a one-to-one conversion of signifiers, it requires a linguistic strategy.

3.2.1.3. Structural Substitution Structural substitution takes place, when one set of rules is replaced by another. In literature the most conspicuous transformation of this kind is generic change. Proceeding from the dassical triad of lyric, epic, and drama, the following generic shifts can be disdosed: (1) lyric

=> (a) epic, => (b) drama; (2) epic => (a) lyric, => (b) drama; (3) drama => (a) lyric, => (b) epic.

Such a paradigm, however, obscures the manifold difficulties inherent in structural substitution. For it does not ac count of generic subdivisions such as epigram, sonnet, and ballad (in lyric); verse epic, novel, and short story (in epic); tragedy, tragicomedy, and farce (in drama), all of them governed by rules of their own. These sub divisions are again subject to substitutions which enhance the number of transformations considerably (e.g., verse epic => novel, novel => tragedy, tragedy => ballad). Thus generic intertextuality or intergenericity assumes a highly complex character which has hardly been given proper attention by genre studies. Matters become even more complex, when the traditional triad is abandoned in favour of a less hierarchic, more democratic system of literary and non-literary text types. Irrespective of such divisions and subdivisions it can be stated that generic intertextuality cannot be detached from its material counterpart. This becomes all the more evident, when the structural rules of the verbal sign system are partly replaced by those of a non-verbal system (e.g., pictorial => verbal in carmina Jigurata or concrete poetry). They result in intertextual hybrids both in matter and manner.

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3.2.2. Addition Additive transformations generate further texts out of a given pre-text which serves as their material source. Hence such texts may be assigned a secondary status, since they rely on their predecessor for a full understanding. Their autonomy is a limited one which often finds expression in the fact that pre- and posttext are contained in one publication; if that is not the case, the latter is frequently furnished with such a title or subtitle as indicates its derivative character. The referential modality of the intertext may be one of coordination or subordination. Coordination means a spatial extension of the original text. This can be located at its end (e.g., Goethe's FaustlI) or its beginning (e.g., Gordon Bottomley's King Lear's Wife). More rarely such a supplement resurnes and expands the central part of a text (e.g., Gerhard Rühm's Ophelia und die Wörter). Coordinate additions often occur in the novel where they produce whole series of texts (e.g., John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga). Subordinate additions are prefaces, mottoes, epilogues, postscripts, appendices, notes, marginal glosses, blurbs, and other supplementary texts. Genette (1987) terms such additions 'epitexts' and distinguishes them from 'peritexts', i.e. advertisements, interviews, diaries, and reviews which, though closely related to the original text, are not necessarily published jointly with it. He subsumes both text types under the term 'paratext' and arrives at the formula: paratext = peritext + epitext. Peritexts may become epitexts and epitexts peritexts, according to their manner of publication. One further terminological remark seems appropriate here. Subordinate additions or paratexts often assurne the status of what is critically known as metatexts. A metatext is a text commenting on another text. Hence every learned article or book dealing with literary texts belongs to this category but also the prefaces, notes, and reviews mentioned above. Such an invention of ever new terminologies may seem an unnecessary and even burdensome toil; it appears, however, in a different light when related to the different kinds of emphasis - transformation, publication, reflexivityplaced on the same phenomenon. Thus like a chameleon intertextuality constantly changes its aspect following the perspective chosen by the recipient.

3.2.3. Subtraction A subtractive transformation may affect the whole text or only part of it. If it affects the whole text, the result may be a text type like the abstract, synopsis, or digest. It is generated either as a shortened paraphrase or an excision of text segments. An illustrative example of the former are Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, of the latter Tom Stoppard's The Fifteen Minute Hamlet which condenses Shakespeare's play to a ten-page length and, in a "encore", even to a two-page length, which is a condensation of a condensation. Stoppard's procedure is grounded on the excision of text segments and the piecing together of the remaining fragments. If handled skilfully, such a collage will enable the recipient to reconstruct the pre-text. Omission of textual details is a

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common practice in theatrical performances where the drama text undergoes curtailments of lines and sentences, of monologues and dialogues, even of whole scenes. As a rule, the recipient is not asked here to enter into an intertextual dialogue between pre- and post-text but just to enjoy a good night out. One of a large number of examples is J ohn Barton and Peter Hall' s The Wars of the Roses, a considerably shortened version of the three parts of Henry VI and of Richard 111. Although text segments of various size were omitted and transposed in it, no intertextual dialogue was intended with the audience, except perhaps for those scholars who enjoy analyzing Shakespearean adaptations.

3.2.4. Permutation This transformation breaks a text down into fragments and rearranges these in a different order. Its working principle is palpably demonstrated by the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppard's Travesties. He snips Shakespeare's sonnet 18, written on paper, into pieces and joins them together in a random manner. No single linguistic sign retains its prior position but und ergo es apermutation. The resultant re-ecriture is a collage - signifying (almost) nothing. It is embedded - as a structural mise en abyme (Dällenbach 1976) - in another collage of Shakespearean quotations taken from different plays. The collage-within-thecollage technique can be viewed as being extended over the whole play. This is in its entirety not only composed of permutations of one text by one author (Shakespeare's sonnet 18) or of several texts by one author (Shakespeare's plays) but of several texts by several authors (0. Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, J. Joyce's Ulysses, etc.). Texts border on texts, are based on texts, transform texts, retreat into texts - a perennial process of inter-textualization.

3.2.5. Complexities Intertextual transformations take place within the horizontal (syntagmatic) and vertical (paradigmatic) axes of sign communication. Syntagmatic intertextuality, when multiplied, results in intertext series, paradigmatic intertextuality, when multiplied, creates intertext condensations.

3.2.5.1. Serialization Syntagmatic intertextuality is modelled on the following transformational paradigm: (1) onetext => one text i.e. the prototype of intertextuality which, however, remains an abstraction in its one-dimensionality. (2) one text => many texts i.e. aseries of intertexts proceeding from one text. (3) many texts => one text i.e. a collage or cento, if composed of heterogeneous pre-text segments.

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(4) many texts => many texts i.e. the average experience of intertextuality. Type (2) is the basis of intertextual serialization. Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, for instance, gave rise to a multitude of successors that form a specific text group, the 'Robinsonads'. Thomas More's Utopia even initiated a narrative subgenre, the utopian novel, which marks a shift from material to structural intertextuality. A single text mayaiso be the source of intertextual inversion (parody, travesty) and negation (anti-novel, counter-blazon) and hence create generic and subgeneric alternatives. A well-known intertextual series may illustrate the complexity of syntagmatic intertextuality. The interpretation of Salome as 'femme fatale' can be traced down through several successive stages: (a) Heinrich Heine' s poetic version in his satiric epic Atta Troll (1847) (b) Gustave Moreau's pictures of (a) (e.g., Salome, L'Apparition [1876]) (c) Joris K. Huysmans's pictorial description of (b) in his novel A Rebours (1884) (d) Oscar Wilde's dramatization of (c) in his play - French version - Salome (1893) (e) English translation (1894) of (d) by Lord Alfred Douglas (f) Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of (e) (g) Hedwig Lachmann's German translation (1903) of (d) (h) Richard Strauss' opera version (1905) of (g) The links in this chain display the following transformations -

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3.2.5.2. Condensation

It is by no means an accident that Richard Strauss' opera appears as the most complex link in the chain of Salome intertexts. It incorporates a multiple intertextuality, both material and structural. The material part consists, among others, of linguistic, musical, choreographie, scenie, and costumic signs. Each type constitutes an intertextual stratum of its own referring, for instance, to musical (e.g., fugue) or choreographie (e.g., oriental dance) pre-texts. If taken together, these strata produce a multi-Iayered material intertextuality. The same applies to dramatic and operatic intergenericity. Both material and structural intertextuality do not exist successively but simultaneously. Their various strata or isotopies are superimposed upon each other. They thus engender a paradigmatic condensation of intertextual poly-isotopies. Whenever the members of such an intertextual hybrid as the opera disagree with each other, the harmony of its complex relationships is disturbed. The principal means of effecting this disturbance is irony. Its results are parody, travesty, and satire. Outstanding specimens of this intertextual inversion are the comic operas by Jacques Offenbach and the Savoy Operas by Gilbert and Sullivan, furthermore John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch's The Beggar's Opera and its 20th century intertext, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper. All of them ridicule literary and musical topoi, motifs, phrases, structures, and genres and thus create complex ironie intertexts. Disruption and discontinuity are often regarded as symptoms of intertextual modernity. The examples of Gay, Offenbach, and Gilbert and Sullivan correct this view and point out that this alleged modernity reaches far back into the past.

A. in the field of material intertextuality:

I. intermedial:

1. verbal

=> non-verbal

a) pictorial (a => b, e => f) b) acoustic (g => h) (b => c) 2. non-verbal => verbal II. interlingual: 1. French 2. French

=> English => German

B. in the field of generic intertextuality: epic => drama (c => d). This analytical table reveals only part of the complexities involved in intertextual serialization. Any additions, subtractions and permutations that accompany each stage of transformation have been disregarded. The spectrum of intertexts broadens with every prolongation of the extant series (e.g., by theatrical performances, film versions). All the more difficult is the task for the recipient to disentangle the threads of the intertextual fabric.

3.3. Tides of I ntertextuality

Temporality is a factor of prime importance in intertextuality. It is interpreted from two radically opposite perspectives, a synchronie and a diachronie one. The synchronie perspective claims that all texts possess a simultaneous existence. This entails the levelling of all temporal differences; history is suspended in favour of the co-presence of the past. Provided this view is accepted, any text can be interrelated to any other text. An endless ars combinatoria takes place in what has been variously termed "musee imaginaire" (Malraux), "chambre d'echos" (Barthes), or "Bibliotheque generale" (Grivel). The locality designated by these metaphors - memory - may be conceived of as a personal or a collective one. In the first alternative the text canon is based on individual experience, in the latter case perhaps on cultural institutions. Regardless of this differentiation, the intertextualist is absolutely free to trace relations between texts. This freedom causes a "plaisir du texte" (Barthes 1973) or rather "intertexte" . Such an attitude suits the creative artist, not the discerning scholar. A radically synchronie perspective establishes the artist as intertextualist, whether as a writer or a critic. As contras ted to this view, the diachronie perspective proposes the historian (of literature, art, music, dance) as intertextualist. Being more of a traditionalist

26

,I I

H. F. Plett

than a progressive he does not hunt after sounds in a diffuse echo chamber but rather prefers well-ordered "archives" (Foucault) of meticulously researched intertextualities. These contain the intertextual chronicles of every code and register its continuities and discontinuities. Such a concept, however, harbours some dangers. Although proclaimed as early as 1968, "the death of the author" (Barthes) did not actually occur in intertextual theory; for author and reader had, at least implicitly, always been a matter of consideration. Of greater weight, however, seems to be the neglect of the socio-cultural context (Ette 1985). This situation encourages an aesthetic tendency comparable to that of New Criticism. It can be avoided by integrating the third semiotic dimension, semantics. From such a methodological position an intercultural remodelling of the intertextuality concept would seem to liberate the intertext from its prison-house of signs and structures and make it resurne its dialogue with reality (Morgan 1985, 8-13; Orr 1986). Intertextuality is not a time-bound feature in literature and the arts. Nevertheless it is obvious that certain cultural periods incline to it more than others. The 20th century has already witnessed two such phases: modernism and postmodernism. In the modernist period, intertextuality is apparent in every section of culture: literature (Eliot, Joyce), art (Picasso, Ernst), music (Stravinsky, Mahler), photography (Heartfield, Hausmann), etc., even if it is interpreted in different ways. Postmodernism shows an increase of this trend which now includes film (e.g., Woody Allen's Play itAgain, Sam) and architecture (e.g., Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia, New Orleans). As the climax of this fashion may be regarded pseudo-intertextuality, which means a text referring to another text that simply does not exist (e.g., Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones). With reference to Borges, J ohn Barth, himself an author of intertextual stories and novels, writes in his essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1982, 1): By "exhaustion" I don't mean anything so tired as the subject of physical, moral, or intellectual decadence, only the used-upness of certain forms or exhaustion of certain possibilities - by no means necessarily a cause for despair.

The scepticism inherent in such a statement raises the questions : Can intertextuality be equated with cultural decadence? Are we dealing with Alexandrianism, mere epigonality here? In his book Statt einer Literaturgeschichte, Walter Jens (1978, 13) made an apt comment on the historicity and value of a citation culture: In einer Spätkultur wird die Welt überschaubar. Man ordnet und sammelt, sucht nach Vergleichen und findet überall Analogien. Der Blick gleitet nach rückwärts; der Dichter zitiert, zieht Vergangenes, ironisch gebrochen, noch einmal ans Licht, parodiert die Stile der Jahrtausende, wiederholt und fixiert, bemüht sich um Repräsentation und zeigt das schon Vergessene in neuer Beleuchtung. Alexandrien ist das Eldorado der Wiederentdeckung, der Hellenismus die hohe Zeit posthumer Nekrologe. Statt Setzungen gibt man Verweise: Amphitryon 38, Ulysses, die Iden des März. Wenn die Gegenwart keinen Schatten mehr wirft, braucht man, um die eigene Situation zu bestimmen, die Silhouette des Perfekts; wenn es den Stil nicht mehr gibt, muß man die Stile beherrschen: auch Zitat und Montage sind Künste, und das Erbe fruchtbar zu machen, erscheint uns als ein Metier, das aller Ehren wert ist.

In tertextuali ties

27

There is almost nothing to be added to this justification of a literature that does not refer to life but rather to itself. In present-day avantgarde literature Yl?-ecriture still dominates ecriture, the text engineer the inspired visionary, the "quotationist" (Milton) the author who seeks to evade the "anxiety of influence" (Bloom). The revers al of this tendency is only a matter of time.

Bibliography Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981 The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. M. Holquist, tr. C. Emerson & M. Holquist. Austin, Tex.lLondon: University of Texas Press. Barth,John 1982 The Literature 0/ Exhaustion and The Literature 0/ Replenishment. Northridge, Calif.: Lord John Press. Barthes, Roland ,1968 "Lamort de l'auteur." Manteia 5,12-17. - Engl. tr.: "The Death of the Author." In Stephen Heath, ed. Image - Music - Text. London: Fontana/New York: HilI & Wang, 1977, 142-148. 1973 Le Plaisir du texte. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1986 "From Work to Text." In Barthes. The Rustle 0/ Language. Tr. Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang, 56-64. Bloom, Harold 1973 The Anxiety o/Influence: A Theory 0/ Poetry. London/Oxford/New York: Oxford UP. Bloomfield, Morton W. 1976 "Quoting and Alluding: Shakespeare in the English Language." In G. B. Evans, ed. Shakespeare: Aspects o/Influence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1-20. BoUer, Paul F. & John George 1989 They Never Said lt: A Book 0/Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions. New York: Oxford UP. Bryson, N orman 1988 "Intertextuality and Visual Poetics." Style 2212, 183-193. Compagnon, Antoine La seconde main ou le travail de la citation. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1979 Culler, Jonathan 1976 "Presupposition and Intertextuality." Modern Language Notes 91, 1380-1396. Dällenbach, Lucien 1976 "Intertexte et autotexte. " Pohique 7127, 282-296. Eco, U mberto 1976 A Theory o/Semiotics. Bloomington, Ind.lLondon: Indiana UP. Ette, Ottmar 1985 "Intertextualität: Ein Forschungsbericht mit literatursoziologischen Anmerkungen." Romanistische Zeitschrift/ür Literaturgeschichte 9, 497-519. Fuchs, Catherine 1982 La paraphrase. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ' Genette, Gerard 1982 Palimpsestes: La litterature au second degre. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1987 Seuils. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

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Grivel, Charles "Les universaux de texte." Litterature 30, 25-50. 1978 1982 "Theses preparatoires sur les intertextes. " In Renate Lachmann, ed. Dialogizität. München: Fink, 237-248. ____ Harty,E.R. 1985 "Text, Context, Intertext." Journal of Literary Studies 1/2,1-13. Heath, Stephen 1972 The Nouveau Roman: A Study in the Practice ofWriting. London: Elek Books. J ameson, Fredric 1972 The Prison-House of Language. Princeton, N.].: Princeton UP. Jenny, Laurent 1976 "La strategie de la forme." Poetique 7/27, 257-281. Jens, Walter Statt einer Literaturgeschichte. Pfullingen: Neske, 7th ed. 1978 Kellett, E. E. Literary Quotation and Allusion. Port Washington, N.Y./London: Kennikat Press 1969 (orig. 1933). Klotz, Volker "Zitat und Montage in neuerer Literatur und Kunst." Sprache im technischen Zeital1976 ter 57-60,259-277. Kristeva, Julia 1967 "Bakhtine, le mot, le dialogue et le roman." Critique 33/239, 438-465. Leitch, Vincent B. 1983 Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction. London: Hutchinson. Leps, M.-C. 1979-1980 "For an Intertextual Method of Analyzing Discourse : A Case Study of Presuppositions." Europa. AJournal of Interdisciplinary Studies 3/1,89-103. Miller, Owen 1985 "Intertextualldentity." In MarioJ. Valdes & OwenMiller, eds. Identity ofthe Literary Text. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 19-40. Morawski, Stefan ' "The Basic Functions of Quotation." In A. J. Greimas, ed. Sign, Language, Culture. 1970 The Hague: Mouton, 690-705. Morgan, Thais E. " 1985 "Is there an Intertext in this Text?: Literary and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intertextuality." AmericanJournal ofSemiotics 3,1-40. Morris, Charles William 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morson, Gary Saul, ed. 1986 Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His Work. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Nolan, Rita 1970 Foundations for an Adequate Criterion of Paraphrase. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Ong, Walter J. 1982 Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Methuen. Orr, Leonard "Intertextuality and the Cultural Text in Recent Semiotics." College English 48, 1986 811-823. Plett, Heinrich F. 1979 Textwissenschaft und Textanalyse: Semiotik, Linguistik, Rhetorik. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 2nd ed.

)

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"The Poetics of Quotation." In J anos S. Petöfi & Terry Olivi, eds. Von der verbalen Konstitution zur symbolischen Bedeutung - From Verbal Constitution to Symbolic M eaning. Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 313-334. Riffaterre, Michael 1971 Essais de stylistique structurale. Paris: Flammarion. 1980 The Semiotics of Poetry. London: Methuen. Roventa- Frumu~ani, Daniela 1985 "Intertextualite e(s)t interaction." Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 30, 23-30. Ruprecht, Hans-George 1983 "Intertextualite." Texte 2, 13-22. Smirnov, Igor P. 1983 "Das zitierte Zitat." In W. Schmid/W.-D. Stempel, eds. Dialog der Texte: Hamburger Kolloquium zur Intertextualität. Wien: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 273-290. Stern berg, Meir 1982 "Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and Forms of Reported Discourse." Poetics Today 3/2, 107-156. Worton, Michael & Judith Still, eds. 1990 Intertextuality: Theories and Practice. Manchester/New York: Manchester UP. 1988

Bypassing Intertextuality

HANS-PETER MAI

Bypassing Intertextuality Hermeneutics, Textual Practice, Hypertext "Nothing is Text but what was spoken in the Bible, and meant there for Person and Place, the rest is Application, wh ich a discreet Man may do weIl; but 'tis his Scripture, not the Holy Ghost." Gohn Seiden) "Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny." (Frank Zappa)

1. I ntroduction This essay will attempt to discuss intertextuality in the contemporary framework of literary studies. It will be argued that a restricted conception of the term, as it has been developed with the intention of making the concept more applicable, is not only contrary to the original intention of Julia Kristeva who proposed the term, but also does not possess any significant heuristic advantages over more tradition al approach~s. Consequently, the reigning question will be: what can it mean today to 'prc;tctice intertextuality' - wh ich I take to be an enterprise clearly distinct from older notions of literary scholarship. I will not attempt to sketch'in detail the unfolding of the intertextuality debate over the years. In this regard a couple of valuable introductions have already been published by T. Morgan (1985), M. Pfister (1985 a), O. Ette (1985) and L. Ping Hui (1983/84). In addition, E. Rusinko (1979) has contributed an informative article on Soviet precursors. These authors discuss outstanding contributions in the field of intertextual theory and practice. I will concentrate on a reconstruction of the initial stages of the theoretical discussion - focusing on Julia Kristeva, who suggested the term, and on her teacher and 'ally' Roland Barthes - and thereby try to provide a perspective for an evaluation of developments since then.

2. Current and Conflicting Notions The debate on intertextuality so far has spawned a surprising (and confusing) variety of terminological variants and mutations: CCinter-semiocity" (Popovic 1980); CCintercontextuality" (Zurbrugg 1984); CCintratextual rewriting" (Altman

31

1981); CClnterauktorialität" (Schabert 1983); CCinterdiscursivite" (Angenot 1983); CCautotexte" (Dällenbach 1976); etc. (Further examples can be found in Pugliese 1988, note 66.) Yet this terminological inflation is not a fertile elaboration of a sufficiently defined and agreed upon concept but rather indicative of a contest for meaning. The basic dis agreement about intertextuality is whether it is to be regarded as a general state of affairs textual or as an inherent quality of specific texts. The least contentious meaning of 'intertextual' designates any allusion in one text to another text. It serves as a handy label for signalling some sort of interconnectedness: CClntertextuality involves the relation of one text to other texts" (Mailloux 1982, 151). But although the concept, thus understood, is eminently usable as scholarly jargon, it is rather banal, as Tallis (1988) points out: At its least ambitious, the 'intertextuality' thesis is ab out literature. Non-contentiously, it takes its rise from the obvious fact that many literary works are explicitly or implicitly allusive. Scholarly references, quotations, echoes, reworkings of traditional themes, deliberate employment of established styles and retelling classic or archetypal 'literary' stories, the deIiberate contrivance of ironic effects by the juxtaposition of disparate and incompatible styles - these intertextual features have been the very stuff of literature since ancient times. (31)

A restricted intertextuality would refer to all possible textual references within the clearly delimited domain of beiles lettres. Such usage is indeed common. Galan (1985), forexample, employs theterm in this sense in his comprehensive presentation of the Prague School of structuralism when he states that these structuralists were cc concerned with the autonomous or intertextual functioning of literature as literature" (21), with intertextuality as ccthe laws of immanent evolution" (8). Yet what complicates matters is that 'intertextuality' often serves as a synonym for 'deconstruction' or 'poststructuralism'. Nye (1987), for one, clearly equates the CCintertextual, an irregular mesh of differences and deferrals", with the Derridean differance (669). Leitch (1983) also associates the term 'intertextual' with a discussion of deconstruction. Notably, he views the development of notions of (inter-)textuality historically as a 'political' strategy: In the late 1960s and early 1970s deconstructive theorists conceive intertextuality as something of a weapon to be used in the contemporary struggle over meaning and truth. Intertextuality [is] a text's dependence on and infiltration by prior codes, concepts, conventions, unconscious practices, and texts [... ]. (161)

Summing up the deconstructive project and practice, Leitch writes: [D]econstruction takes the semiological theory of the sign (signifier + signified) beyond the sliding signified to the floating signifier. (Notice that it eschews the referent.) Since language serves as ground of existence, the world emerges as infinite Text. Everything gets textualized. All contexts, whether political, economic, social, psychological, historical, or theological become intertexts; that is, outside influences and forces und ergo textualization. Instead of literature we have textuality; in place of tradition, intertextuality. Authors die so that readers may come into prominence. [... ] What are texts? [...] Sites for the freeplay of grammar, rhetoric, and (illusory) reference.[ ... ] Truth comes forth in the reifications, the personal pleasures, of reading. Truth is not an entity or property of the text. [... ] Deconstruction works to deregulate controlled dissemination and celebrate misreading. (122)

32

Bypassing Intertextuality

H.-P. Mai

The opposing, clearly restricted concept of intertextuality is prevalent in several German anthologies touching upon the subject published recently (Lachmann 1982; Schmid & Stempel 1983; Stierle & Warning 1984; Broich & Pfister 1985). Scholars therein principally welcome the obviously stimulating idea of 'intertextuality', but only insofar as it proves its usefulness within the tradition al confines of literary and general art theory and interpretation. In this context, some taxonomic models of intertextual relationships have been developed (Grivel1975; Grübel1983; Lachmann 1984; Lindner 1985; Plett 1985; SchulteMiddelich 1985). Yet explicitly revisionist concepts of intertextuality have also been advocated (Stierle 1982; Schabert 1983). Serious doubts concerning an extended, poststructural conception of intertextuality are common to most of these scholars. Yet Pfister (1985 a, 18) has correctly pointed out that a simple reduction of the complexities of the concept is no adequate reaction. Traditional text linguistics seems to have co me into contact with the term only tangentially. Two recent surveys at least mention the term (Nöth 1985, 457; Schlieben-Lange 1988, 1206 f.), yet only with reference to Beaugrande & Dressler (1981) who favour a technological reduction of the intertextual concept to "a procedural control upon communicative activities at large" (206). An article by Lemke (1985) is exceptional in this regard. All in all, discussions of intertextuality seem to be most comfortably localized within the wide domain of contemporary semiotics, although one should not underestimate the diversity of approaches which can be found under this heading. Faced with such definitional difficulties, I hope that by reconstructing the historical intellectual context in whibh 'intertextuality' originated, we may. be better able to understand the present confusion and factiousness of intertextual scholars. But before I proceed in this direction I would like to rule out some other approaches to the topic under discussion. First, an etymological unraveling of the word 'intertextuality' does not seem to be particularly helpful for und erstanding the term (cf. Ruprecht 1983, 13; a much more level-headed explication can be found in Harty 1985, 2 f.). After all, Greek and Latin morphemes have always served as a reservoir for neologisms. But Kristeva, for one, did not expound her concept of intertextuality by reference to (or even reverence for) the ancients. Her points of reference are not PlatolAristotlelOvid but HegellMarxl H usserllF reud/Saussure/Chomsky. Second, I am very skeptical of a historical approach which tries to point out similarities between Renaissance notions of imitatio and intertextuality (Carron 1988; Schoeck 1984). There seems to be a fundamental difference in the way in which 'intertextual' strategies were pursued then and now. By imitatio the author tried to position hirnself within an accepted order of literary works; he tried to partake of it even in the act of distinguishing hirnself from it (even a parodic attitude was contained bythe classicalmodel; cf. Ruthven 1979, 102-109). Yet as conceived in contemporary art theory, an intertextual effort would not be so much an (even reluctant) imitation of venerable precursors as, at least, a subver-

33

sive use of a traditional stock of artistic means of expression. Only if one chooses to ignore the poststructuralist indictment of authority can one draw parallels between 'intertextuality' then and now. Last, M. Bakhtin's relevance for the intertextual debate is rather doubtful. It is true that Kristeva coined the term 'intertextuality' for the first time in 1966 in conjunction with a review of his work (Kristeva 1986 b). But much has been written about his notion of 'dialogism' without 'intertextuality' being mentioned at all. Bakhtin seems to be considered mainly with regard to other contexts: sociology, formalism, generalliterary theory etc. (cf. e.g. Lehmann 1977; Günther 1981; Carroll 1983; Davidson 1983; LaCapra 1983; White 1984; Swingewood 1986). Some critics even definitely deny any affinity between poststructuralism and Bakhtin's theories (e.g. Shukman 1980, 223). Others merely assert a connexion (Bove 1983). Only Pechey, as far as I know, presents a contextual reading of Bakhtin which helps to clarify his possible relevance for Kristeva' s poststructuralist intertextual concept. Kristeva, it can safely be said, appropriated Bakhtin's ideas for her own purposes. The closest similarity with her concept of intertextuality is suggested by Feral (who, in turn, is mainly paraphrasing Kristeva): From Bakhtin Kristeva borrows the contextualization of any signifying practice [... ] in an historicalor social frame. Attempting to replace the static subdivision of texts by a model in which the literary structure does not merely exist, but elaborates itself in relationship to another structure, Bakhtin [postulated] that the word was no longer to be considered as a point of fixed meaning, but as a place - a place where various textual surfaces and networks [ ... ] cross. (Feral 1980,275)

Therefore the following inquiry will take its departure from Kristeva's writings as the original source of the contemporary intertextuality debate.

3. The Critical Context (1)

Kristeva developed her notion of intertextuality at a time when academic literary criticism underwent a "crisis, culminating in the late 1960s, of the traditional definition of the cultural function of the humanities, and especially the study of literature" (Weimann 1985, 278). Weimann has conveniently summarized the issues on which the consensus of the intellectual community was falling apart (278- 84). The emerging concept of 'intertextuality' was one of the symptoms of this crisis. The greatest challenge to traditionalliterary scholarship issued from linguistic models of inquiry which had acquired prestige because of their allegedly scientific nature. 1 This linguistic-structuralist approach promised to do away with subjective fallacies such as intuition. At last, literary studies seemed to be able to attain a degree of objective knowledge which had been hitherto reserved for the 1

On the problematic notion of a 'scientific' literary criticism cf. Seamon (1989).

f,T,

34

H.-P. Mai

. Bypassing Intertextuality

'hard sciences'. Even more temptingly, linguistic structuralism promised to provide a master theory of all cultural production. Still, literary structuralism was not so 'different' that it would not continue to cater for the tradition al notion of intratextual autonomy, of the self-contained artistic object (as for the roots of this notion cf. Paulson 1988,115-121). After all, linguistic constructs were to be explained solely by reference to linguistic means. In addition, the new structuralist approach provided a conceptual space in which an opposition against traditional forms of scholarship could articulate itself - untainted by academically still suspicious inclinations of an explicitly political kind. Of course, the structuralist claims were not accepted undisputedly. But the arguments levelled against them were largely of a traditionally hermeneutic kind and therefore could be interpreted as intellectual rearguard operations. But there were also attempts to reconcile the structuralist spirit with hermeneutical notions. P. Ricoeur is an outstanding example in this regard. One of his essays, originally published in 1970, well illustrates the then virulent tensions in literary criticism. It has the further advantage of explicitly taking into account ideas of a post-linguist structuralism. Ricoeur starts by making an important distinction: a text is not merely fixed (personal) speech, text "is written precisely because it is not said. [... ] a text is really a text only when it is not restricted to transcribing an anterior speech" (Ricoeur 1981 a, 146). In insisting on a qualitative difference between speech and written text, he agrees with the poststructuralist demand for a trans-linguistic approach to texts. He also points out that an analogy of text and dialogue is inappropriate unless major qualifications are made (146 f.).2 Language as text, Ricoeur perceives, has a very special relation towards referentiality: [I]n living speech, the ideal sense of what is said turns towards the real reference, towards that 'about which' we speak. At the limit, this real reference tends to merge with an ostensive designation where speech rejoins the gest~re of pointing. Sense fades into reference and the latter into the . act of showing. This is no longer the case when the text takes the place of speech. The movement of reference towards the act of showing is intercepted [ ... ] I say intercepted and not suppressed. (148)3 I

As we can see, Ricoeur does not want to do away with referentiality completely (which deconstructive theorists such as Derrida advocate). He holds that the meaning of texts can be recovered through a structural hermeneutics: "As we This assertion, if it holds true, casts a serious doubt upon scholarly approaches which would want to integrate literature into the domain of communication technology (cf. Beaugrande & Dressler 1981); it also sheds considerable doubt on glib appropriations of Bakhtin's 'dialogism' . 3 Alluding to poststructuralist notions he continues with: "[I]t is in this respect that I shall distance myself from what may be called henceforth the ideology of the absolute text." (148) Also, Ricoeur does retain the notion of authorial intention (147), though in a heavily mitigated form: to hirn the author is always necessarily his own reader and as such always at a distance from his own text (he is never a speaker who can be imagined expressing his personal self in his utterances) (149). It follows that "the intended meaning of a text is not essentially the presumed intention of the author" (161). 2

35

shall see, the text is not without reference; the task of reading, interpretation, will be precisely to fulfil the reference" (148). Yet it is a special kind of reference: as the reference to real objects is suspended in a text, the reference to other texts gains importance, as only the latter ensures the text's comprehensibility. Yet the meaning thus accruing to the text is much more flexible than the meaning of speech in everyday communication: In virtue of this obliteration of the relation to the world, each text is free to enter into relation with all the other texts which come to take the place of the circumstantial reality referred to by living speech. This relation of text to text, within the effacement of the world about which we speak, engenders the quasi-world of texts or literature. (148 f.)

Ricoeur sees two distinct critical approaches resulting from such a notion of the text: one is a formalist/ structuralist approach (as exemplified also by the close reading of American N ew Critics), the other is a hermeneutic one: [T]he quasi-world of texts engenders two possibilities. We can, as readers, remain in the suspense of the text, treating it as a worldless and authorless object; in this case we explain the text in terms of its internal relations, its structure. On the other hand, we can lift the suspense and fulfil the text in speech, restoring it to living communication; in this case, we interpret the text. (152)

Ricoeur clearly opts for the hermeneutic alternative. It only, he avers, makes possible a meaningful encounter of the reader with the text: [T]he interpretation of a text culminates in the self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands hirns elf better, understands hirns elf differently, or simply begins to understand himself. [ ... ] explanation is nothing if it is not incorporated as an intermediary stage in the process of self-understanding. (158)

The social function of such a hermeneutic procedure is to overcome feelings of alienation. Ricoeur is refreshingly open about this: "One of the aims of all hermeneutics is to struggle against cultural distance. This struggle can be understood in purely temporal terms as a struggle against secular estrangement" (159) . After all,the traditional hermeneutic approach is an attempt of the (intellectual) individual to posit hirns elf within the cultural tradition (a critical account of this hermeneutic tradition is given by Pugliese 1988,23-36). Accordingly, Ricoeur holds that the text's meaning sterns from the "tradition in the very interior of a text" (163). The interpreter's role is to surrender hirnself to the text, passively, but also knowingly and deliberately - i.e. contemplatively. 4 Ricoeur' s position may serve as a backdrop against which a new poststructuralist skepticism articulated itself, a skepticism concerning both scientific and

4

The traditional notion of hermeneutic understanding has been advocated most convincingly by H. G. Gadamer and has found a severe critic in J. Habermas (cf. Hauff 1985, 19-34; Ricoeur 1981 b). The resulting quarrel became part of a much more comprehensive, politically motivated debate in which poststructuralists partook. This is not the place to trace the more strictly political controversy of this period and its ramifications, particularly in and with regard to literary studies; for further information cf. Jameson 1985; Hohendahl1980.

36

H.-P. Mai

hermeneutic models of interpretation. It was a skepticism which doubted the possibility of any master theory. And it questioned also (for political reasons) Ricoeur's attempt to reconcile then popular structuralist thought with traditional hermeneutics. A good summary of the ensuing changes in the field of literary criticism is given by Hartman (1976). Most pertinent to our purpose, Hartman applies the notion of intertextuality to the activity of the critic: his writing, he holds, gains an "allusive, dense, intertextual quality" (209) and stresses "the co-presence in literary works (broadly understood) of mixed or even discontinuous orders of discourse" (218). This confronts us squarely again with the initial question: is intertextuality an artistic procedure and hence a quality inherent in a work of art, or a function of a critic's (reader's) activity? But first something remains to be clarified: what, actually, is the 'text' to which 'intertextuality' refers?

4. Versions

0/ 'Text' and Tel Quel

Without a clear understanding of the various concepts of 'text' it is a bold enterprise to talk about intertextuality. Surprisingly, few commentators, especially among its detractors, try to comprehend intertextuality under this heading. Weimann (1985, 284-85) demonstrates that the word 'text' can be conceived of differently, depending on the respective intellectual context. On the one hand, there is the empirical Anglo-American concept based on notions of discourse as language event. This is to be distinguished from structuralist concepts (of European des cent) in which the text is expressive of an abstract system which conditions it. Structuralist concepts can be enlarged, by the inclusion of non-linguistic sign activities, into semiotic models. Poststructural, 'textual' notions of text replace the notion of text as a mere function of a linguistic system with the notion of text as an 'activity'. What they also have in common is their critical use of the idea of 'text', which finds its expression, on the one hand, in their self-awareness of their own procedures and, on the other hand, in their attempts to point out the ideological implications of seemingly objectively given entities. Last, the concept of text diametrically opposed to this all-encompassing 'textualization' is the one as endorsed by the historical tradition of philology - although even here the influence of poststructuralist notions is making itself felt (cf. Martens 1989). Brütting points out the ideological implications of the tradition al notion of 'text', current in academic literary criticism when Kristeva and her combattants developed their counterstrategy (Brütting 1976,21-24). He also tries to sum up their new concept of 'textuality', although he cautions that "die avantgardistischen Theoretiker [ ... ] den Begriff texte nie streng formuliert haben und dies in gewisser Weise sogar unmöglich ist [the avantgarde theorists never strictly defined the term texte, which is, in a way, even impossible]" (73 f.; my translation). Who were these theorists?

. Bypassing Intertextuality

37

The intellectual context of the development of the poststructuralist notion of 'textuality' by a group of intellectuals affiliated with the periodical Tel Quel is excellently explained by Brütting (cf. also Grimm 1987; Moi 1986; Kao 1981). He provides a concise history of the group's composition and its general intellectual orientation (Brütting 1976, 115-120), and he rightly stresses its leftist political commitment. Tel Quel emerges as a group of oppositional intellectuals whose assorted theories are marked, to a variable extent, by Saussurean, Marxist-Maoist, and psychoanalytical notions (especially in their reformulation by Jacques Lacan).5 Yet it would be wrong to ascribe to them a unified theoretical outlook. The group has been much more characterized by internal dissension than by a monolithic point of view. Tel Quel's political enthusiasm, although following Marxist precepts, is most aptly characterized as 'textual'. 'Text', for its adherents 6 , is no lünger only a superstructural epiphenomenon but, if wielded correctly, a basic ideological weapon which can contribute directly to a revolutionary change in society.7 This 'text' is no Ion ger the object with which textual criticism used to deal. Actually it is no object at all; it is, as a way of writing (ecriture), a productive (and subversive) process. Somewhat hard to grasp but mostimportant to see is Tel Quel's aversion to the concept of communication. In their ;view, communication acts mainly as the agent of social cohesion by pressing fpr consensus. Against the 'straight jacket' of common sense Tel Quelians tried to posit their subversive linguistic practice. Consequently, they favoured the connotative 'text' and pitted it against all denotative language, which they held to be only designed to guarantee law and order. 'Text', Kristeva held most poignantly, is the expression of a "defiant productivity" (1986, 42). The 'textual' rebels resorted to strong fundamental arguments in order to justify their attitudes and practices. But historically it is necessary to point out the much more mundane opposition which also fueled the 'textual' criticism of Tel Quel: the traditional French practice of explication de texte (cf. Brütting 1976,26-32). Brütting makes it perfectly clear that die oft überspitzten und radikalen Kritiken der literaturtheoretischen Avantgarde in Frankreich nicht zu verstehen sind, wenn man sich nicht vor Augen hält, gegen welche literarischen Traditionen und Ideologien, gegen welche literarischen Institutionen sie sich zu situieren versuchen. [... ] In der [explication de texte} lebt das 19. Jahrhundert weiter, das sie erfunden hat

[.. .J. 5

6

7

The influence of Marxist theory was mediated by Althusser's writings (his theory is sketched by Seung 1982,112-118; cf. too Coward & Ellis 1977, 69-77; Jameson 1985). Their literary application by Macherey is discussed in Frow (1986, 18-29). - For a detailed historical presentation of the role of Freudian psychoanalysis and Lacan versus the French psychiatrie establishment, cf. Turkle (1978). Bowie (1979) provides a good (and readable) introcluction to Lacan's theories. Among the contributors to the standard anthology ofTel Quelian writings are Barthes, Kristeva, Derrida, Foucault, SoUers, to name but those who are still prominent French theorists (cf. Tel QueI1968). Harland (1987) explains very well the philosophical underpinnings of this new turn, from base to superstructure, in marxist political thinking.

38

H.-P. Mai [the often pointed and radical critique of the French avantgarde in literary theory cannot be understood if one is not aware against which literary traditions and ideologies, against which literary institutions it tries to articulate itself. The nineteenth century which invented it survives in the explication de texte.] (32; my translation)

This tradition al approach to literary texts still survives in the French critique universitaire and the critique scolaire (69).8 4.1. Kristeva The persons referred to most often with regard to poststructuralist notions of textuality/intertextuality are Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida. 9 In the late 1960s, Kristeva subscribed to Tel Quelian notions of textual, i.e. cultural, revolution. She tried to achieve this objective by fusing ideas from philosophy (Husserl/Derrida), political science (Marxl Althusser) and psychoanalysis (Freud/Lacan) with linguistic-structuralist procedures (Chomsky) and formallogic (cf. Adriaens 1981). In a way, she borrowed from the prestige these disciplines possessed while, at the same time, trying to subvert them. On the terminologicallevel this resulted in a deliberate conceptual muddle. Later on, her criticism acquired a more strictly psychoanalytical tinge. Presentations of her notions frequently do not differentiate enough between her 'structuralist' phase prior to the publication of La revolution de langage poetique in 1974 and her predominantly psychoanalytical theory starting with this very book. (An outline of her later thought can be found in Kristeva 1975). She coined the term 'intertextuality' during the earlier phase. In her essay "Semiotics: A Critical Science and/or a Critique of Science", Kristeva (1986 a) grounds her enterprise clearly in the intellectually unstable period of the late 1960s - she diagnoses a "cultural subversion which our civilization is undergoing" (75). One major point of reference is Marx, although Freudian influence already makes itself clearly felt; but her emphasis is on language theory. And, above all, hers is a critical and a self-critical project. She states: "In a decisive move towards self-analysis, (scientific) discourse today has 8

9

Brütting is not alone in this assessment. Grimm, who provides a concise his tory of French academic literary criticism, also finds: "Die fr[ anzösische] univ[ ersitäre] Lit[eratur]wiss[ enschaft] hat eine [ ... ] Eigengesetzlichkeit des geisteswiss[enschaftlichen] Gegenstandes nie reflektiert [ ... ]; sie sieht ihre Aufgabe allein in der Suche nach dem einen entstehungs geschichtlich bedingten Sinn des lit[erarischen] Gegenstandes [French academic literary scholarship never contemplated the unique quality of objects of inquiry in the humanities; its aim is solely the search for the one historically determined meaning of the literary object]." (Grimm 1987, 134; my translation) Even Hempfer, who severely criticizes Tel-Quelian theories, concedes that many of the opposition al 'textual' notions become understandable in view of this tradition al French critical practice (1976, 51). Harland perceptively sketches Kristeva's and Barthes's position and its analogy with Derrida's philosophy of language (Harland 1987,167-169); as Derrida is less concerned with literature, he will play only a marginal role here. An extended critical discussion of Derrida can be found in Seung (1982).

. Bypassing Intertextuality

39

begun to re-examine languages in order to isolate their (its) models or patterns" (75). In contrast to linguistic structuralism which modeled itself on the exact sciences, Kristeva envisages a discipline which tries not only to come to grips with its objects, but, at the same time, seeks to be aware of the fact that those objects are always constituted as objects of knowledge in the first place, not found. Hence, Kristeva's brand of semiotics is marked by its self-reflexiveness: "[T]his is where semiotics differs from the exact sciences, [ ... ] the former is also the production of its own model-making" (77); "[s]emiotics is [ ... ] a mode of thought where science sees itself as (is conscious of itself as) a theory" (77). The consequences are far-reaching: This means that semiotics is at once are-evaluation of its object and/or of its models, a critique both of these mode1s'(and therefore of the sciences from which they are borrowed) and of itself (as a system of stable truths). [ ... ] semiotics cannot hardeninto a science let alone into the science, for it is an open form of research, a constant critique that turns back on itself and offers its own auto-critique. As it is its own theory, semiotics is the kind of thought which, without raising itself to the level of a system, is still capable of modelling (thinking) itself. (77)

The next sentence characterizes such a semiotics as a critique of ideology (in contrast to traditional hermeneutics) but also as a paradoxical enterprise: "But this reflexive movement is not a circular one [as in hermeneutics]. Semiotic research remains a form of inquiry that ultimately uncovers its own ideological gesture, only in order to re cord and deny it before starting all over again" (77 f.). Finally, Kristeva asserts: Semiotic practice breaks with this teleological vision of a science that is subordinated to a philosophical system and consequently even destined itself to become a system. Without becoming a system, the site of semiotics, where models and theories are developed, is a place of dispute and self-questioning, a 'cirde' that remains open. Its 'end' does not rejoin its 'beginning', but, on the contrary, rejects and rocks it, opening up the way to another discourse, that is, another subject and another method [ ... ]. (78)

It seems that in these remarks the political (Maoist) concept of 'permanent revolution' is transposed onto the field of intellectual inquiry. Kristeva also borrows from the explanatory model of Freudian psychoanalysis. In contrast to former applications of psychoanalytical thought in literary studies Kristeva stresses the procedural character of the psychoanalytical session over against the 'scientific' taxonomy of the mind which this discipline also promises. Tying in with her observations on Marx's concept of 'production' (81 f.) are her reflections on the Freudian 'dream work'. She deliberately opposes the latter to economic production, which she sees characterized by the valorization of the finished work (object) and its exchange value. The dream work, on the other hand, is an (utopian) example of a kind of work which is all play on the surface and yet performs vital functions for the individua1. 10 All in all, Kristeva advocates the application of an antagonistic (hence Marxist, as com10

For Marx's early concept of 'work', on which Kristeva's notions are most likely based, cf. Röder (1989).

40

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H.-P. Mai

pared to Hegelian) dialectics ll in a new discipline, a semiotics of cultural meaning. The underlying notion of 'culture' is a far cry from the reconciliatory concept to which tradition al hermeneutics adheres. In this, Kristeva apparently belongs to a contemporary group of "Western and Soviet semioticians [who] tend to interpret culture as a minimal condition for social existence, and to regard it as the domain of social conflicts and struggle for the collective memory" (Rewar 1976, 375). Kristeva closes her article with a few thoughts on the subject of literature. Literature is not accorded a privileged place in her cultural semiotics: "[T]he new semiotic models then turn to the social text, to those social practices of which 'literature' is only one unvalorized variant, in order to conceive of them as so many ongoing transformations and/or productions" (87). What does intertextuality have to do with all this? Kristeva's concept of it is very much analogous to the model of intellectual inquiry just outlined and fueled by the same impulses. Writing about intertextuality, her general semiotic inquiry is only displaced onto the field of literature as cultural discourse. This transposition takes place in the essay "The Bounded Text" of 1969 (Kristeva 1980 a).12 Here the single text is characterized as a 'productivity' analogous to the dream work outlined in the former essay. Kristeva defines the text as a trans-linguistic apparatus that redistributes the order of language by relating communicative speech, which aims to inform directly, to different kinds of anterior or synchronie utterances. The text is therefore a productivity, and this me ans : first, that its relationship to the language in which it is situated is redistributive (destructive-constructive) [ ...]; and second, that it is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another. (36)

The literary scholar's intertextual task would be to define "the specificity of different textual arrangements by placing them within the general text (culture) of which they are part and which is in turn, part of them" (36). The intertextual procedure would, "by study'ing the text as intertextuality, conside[r] it as such within (the text of) society and history" (37). Kristeva's notion of intertextuality here resembles very closely a sociological theory of literature. The important difference is that Kristeva no Ion ger conceives of societyIhistory as something outside the text, some objective entity over against the text, but partaking of the same textuality as literature. Questions as to the scientific status of such an approach are somewhat misleading. They seem inappropriate, first of all, if one considers that Kristeva is trying to demonstrate that a 'pure science' is an impossible notion in the semiotic sphere because there is no privileged meta-level from which we can askl answer universal questions. But Kristeva also very intentionally subverts scientific con-

ventions: In her very writing she blithely appropriates scientific terminology from diverse disciplines for her own purposes. 13 She explicitly justifies this appropriation in the methodological essay presented above. In it she advocates a deliberate "subversion of the existing terminology" (1986 a, 79), which Marx allegedly also practiced (80). On the one hand, "[s]emiotics [ ... ] rejects a humanist and subjectivist terminology, and addresses itself to the vocabulary of the exact sciences" (80). But it does so not in order to claim objectivity but to appropriate the terms and re-evaluate them: "Far from being simply a stock of models on which semiotics can draw, these annexed sciences ar~ also the object which semiotics challenges in order to make itself into an explicit critique" (79). The ultimate aim is the discovery of ideology in all 'objective' assertions: "Playing [ ... ] on the different meanings a term acquires in different theoretical contexts, semiotics reveals how science is born in ideology" (79).14 It is important to see the political motivations behind Kristeva's early theoretical efforts. Intertextuality is one lever in her theoretical attempt to dislocate the mainstays of the "bourgeois world" (1986 a, 75). Hence, Kristeva's intertextuality is a far cry from being taxonomic. In her eyes it is a politically transformative practice. In the last resort, hers is a political concept which aims at empowering the reader! critic to oppose the literary and social tradition at large. 4.2. Barthes

The greatest congruence of Kristeva and Barthes 15 concerning intertextual matters can be found in Barthes's article "Theory of the Text" of 1973. Like Kristeva, he holds that the limitations of the linguistic-structuralist approach

\3

14

15

11

12

On the fundamental difference between Hegelian and Marxian dialectics cf. Seung (1982, 104-112). Another version of this article has been published as "Problemes de la structuration du texte". It is less strictly language-oriented and hence displays its proximity to Kristeva's criticism of scientific positivism more overtly.

41

Feral refers to Kristeva's changing methodologie al preoccupations (1980, 277, 279); he notes, disapprovingly, "the temptation of science" "to which Kristevian semiotics succombed[sic} in its early stages" (275); Barthes, approvingly, writes that Kristeva points out "the terminological slippage of so-called scientific definitions" (1986, 169). Kristeva's terminological inconsistencies are discussed by Adriaens (1981, 193-195). For a positive evaluation of the 'parasitic' nature of such a deconstructive enterprise cf. DImer (1983, 93, 99-101). An example of how Kristeva practices this (subversive, or careless, depending on one's view) appropriation herself can be found in comparing "The Bounded Text" with another version of the same article and relating the findings to her Revolution du langage poetique. In "Problemes de la structuration du texte" she devotes a considerable amount of space to developing her notions of the geno- and the pheno-text in analogy to Chomsky's linguistic model of deep structure and surface structure (Kristeva 1968, 300-304, 309-312); she even calls her method 'transformational analysis'. In "The Bounded Text" she does not borrow from Chomsky altogether. In La Revolution she revives her concept 6f geno- and pheno-text, but now it has thoroughly psychoanalytic underpinnings. Barthes is one of the most popular and controversial French literary theorists. For further information.see the bibliography by Freedman & Taylor (1983). Let me mention here only Leitch's thorough presentation of Barthes in the context of intertextuality (Leitch 1983, 102-115) and Ray's lucid mapping of Barthes's theoretical progress (Ray 1984). - Barthes expressed his admiration for Kristeva, who once had been his pupil, most explicitly in his review of Semeiotike (Barthes 1986).

42

H.-P. Mai

have to be overcome by embracing "a new field of reference" (Barthes 1981,35), namely dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis : For there to be a new science it is not enough, in effect, for the old science to become deeper and wider (which is what happens when one passes from the linguistics of the senten ce to the semiotics of the work); there has to be a meeting of different epistemes, indeed on es that normally know nothing of each other (as is the case with Freudianism, Marxism, and structuralism), and this meeting has to produce a new object (it is no Ion ger a question of a new approach to an old object): in the event, it is this new object that we call text. (35)

The major drawback of tradition al scholarship, according to Barthes, is that its epistemological concern has always been with "objective signification" (37). In contrast, the new textual practice is marked by signifiance, a ceaseless semantic productivity : The text works what? Language. It deconstructs the language of communication, representation, or expression [ ... ] and reconstructs another language [ ... ] having neither bottom nor surface [ ... ] but the stereographic space of the combinative play, which is infinite once one has gone outside the limits of current communication [...] and of narrative or discursive verisimilitude. (37)

This new object, 'text', is intertextual by default: The text redistributes language [ ... J. One of the paths of this deconstruction-reconstruction is to perrnute texts, scraps of texts that have existed or exist around and finally within the text being considered: any text is an intertext; other texts are present in it, at varying levels, in more or less recognisable forms: the texts of the previous and surrounding culture. (39)

Still, such a 'text~al' approach is not to be equated with mere subjective caprice. Rather, it is to be conceived o,f as a paradoxical undertaking (45), "a critical science [ ... ] which [permanfntly] calls into question its own discourse" (43); "directly critical of any metalanguage" (35), textual analysis is interested in "a dialectic, not [... ] classificatron" (36). This comes ab out, as Barthes notes elsewhere, because "from the moment that a piece of research concerns the text [ ... ] the research itself becomes text, production: to it, any 'result' is literally im-pertinent" (Barthes 1977 b, 198). It is here that Barthes most clearly parts with all structurally oriented and even with many hermeneutically inclined colleagues because he is claiming that, with regard to the 'text', artistic and critical activity are indistinguishable: "Not only does the theory of the text extend to infinity the freedoms of reading [...], but it also insists strongly on the (productive) equivalence of writing and reading" (Barthes 1981,42). On the other hand, Barthes does point out that his notion of a 'textual science' would not invalidate tradition al approaches to literary phenomena; it would only put them into a new perspective - and would preclude any facile self-aggrandizement: "This methodological principle does not necessarily oblige us to reject the results of the canonical sciences of the work (his tory , sociology, etc.), but it leads us to use them partially, freely, and above all relatively" (43). Yet on the down side of Barthes's notions of textuality there stilliurks a dangerous solipsism. After all, textual

Bypassing Intertextuality

43

[p ]roductivity is triggered off [ ...] either (in the case of the author) by ceaselessly producing 'word-plays', or (in the case of the reader) by inventing ludic meanings, even if the author of the text had not foreseen them, and even if it was historically impossible for hirn to foresee them [.. .J. (37)

Consequently, every textualist would have to content hirns elf with inventing highly eclectic semantic games, not together with, but parallel to his textual copractitioner( s) - which means that their communicative exchange would consist in interminable charades never to terminate in any consensual agreement as to its trans-subjective validity. Against this bleak vision intertextuality seems to reintroduce the sociable aspect of (critical) communication: "Epistemologically, the concept of intertext is what brings to the theory of the text the volume of sociality" (39). Barthes upholds that in relation to the formalist sciences (dassicallogic, semiology, aesthetics) [textual analysis] reintroduces into its field his tory, society (in the form of the intertext), and the subject (but it is a doyen subject, ceaselessly displaced - and undone - by the presence-absence of his une onscious). (45)

This assertion of history, society, and the (split) subject seems to contradict many notions held ab out the poststructuralist enterprise in general, and even some of Barthes's own words in his very similar essay "From Work to Text" of 1971 (Barthes 1977 a). Here, the historical dim~nsion is being suspended, in the end, in favour of an utopian egalitarian textual vision: [B]efore History (supposing the latter does not opt for barbarism), the Text achieves, if not the transparence of social relations, that at least of language relations: the Text is that space where no language has a hold over any other, where languages circulate [ ... J. (164)16

But Barthes knows full weIl that this is only avision. As for 'textual' practice, he does not preach a complacent ahistoricism, an irresponsible free-for-all play for reasons of political expediency, as he makes clear (Barthes 1977 b, 207 f.). Yet politically his attitude is not an activist one (for a criticism of Barthes's 'aestheticism' cf. Huyssen 1988,210-213). One should not overlook that Barthes, for all his attacks on 'bourgeois culture', has always argued primarily as a literary critic. 17

16 An important difference in two widespread translations of Barthes's essay should be noted here. Stephen Heath translates: "the Text participates in its own way in a social utopia" (Barthes 1977 a, 164). In Textual Strategies the line reads: "the Text participates in a social utopia of its own" (Barthes 1979, 80). The latter example seems to stress the self-contained character of a 'textual domain', whereas the first translation points out the primarily social nature of the utopia mentioned of which the text is only one aspect. Actually, Heath's rendering is much doser to the original which reads: "[LJe Texte participe asa maniere d'une utopie sociale" (Barthes 1971,232). 17 What makes Barthes's argumentative procedure (as to intertextuality amongst other things) doubtful on a more strictly epistemologicallevel is his privileging language as a me ans of interpretation of all signifying systems (Barthes 1981,42) which leads hirn (and others) to see the whole world as just one vast text; Seung (1982, 126) has raised a pertinent methodological critique in this respect.

44

Bypassing Intertextuality

H.-P. Mai

One should beware of too easily dismissing Barthes's or Kristeva's notions of intertextuality. Their somewhat eclectic theoretical underpinnings do invite misinterpretation. Yet what is important to see historically is that these concepts partake of a more general tendency towards a more reader-oriented criticism, which has turned out to be the most stimulating innovation in literary scholarship of the 1970s. Subsequently the sociological, that is, the politically activist, aspects of intertextuality were shoved into the background. The busy applicators from the field of literary studies took over. Kristeva herself abandoned her eclectically unstable theoretical building in favour of a foundation on what Lewis aptly calls "a psychobiological model of the germination of semiosis" (Lewis 1974,30) in her Revolution du langage pohique. In this book Kristeva also discards the term 'intertextuality' in favour of 'transposition' (Kristeva 1986 c, 111), a term which she uses in a clearly psychoanalytical context. She explicitly criticizes those scholars who take 'intertextuality' for a fashionable label for source-influence studies. But this did not stop the process of appropriation.

5. Applied Intertextuality

There are critics with split affinities: they feel tempted by certain poststructuralist notions but cannot accept the unlimited creation of intertextual relationships through the reader nor do they subscribe to a sociologically oriented historical intertextual practice as exemplified by Kristeva's Le texte du roman because they 'put the literary text first'. The tendency to interpret intertextuality in such a more conservative, main1y ,intra-literary fashion seems to have been strongly influenced by an 1976 article by L. Jenny. His mapping of the intertextual enterprise aims at a harmonious 'fusion of the irreconcilable diversity stressed by theorists such as Kristeva. Jenny starts out with the assumption that intertextuality is a precondition of any cultural semiotics, and he affirms that the "intertextu al attitude is [ ... J a critical attitude" Oenny 1982, 37). But soon enough he expresses the opinion that the "problem of intertextuality is to bind together several texts in one without their destroying each other and without the intertext [ ... J being torn apart as a structured whole" (45). (This statement contrasts sharply with Kristeva's assertion that in the case of intertextuality "several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another" [Kristeva 1980 a, 36; my emphasis J.) Jenny' s main intc!-est is: "[HJow does a text assimilate preexisting utterances?" (50). This assimilation is to take place, preferably, as "[iJntertextual harmonization" (52). Jenny likes to think of intertextuality in terms of an accumulation of artistic wealth: "Intertextuality speaks a language whose vocabulary is the sum of all existing texts. [ ... J This confers on the intertext an exceptional richness and density" (45). To such an ontological notion the earlier intertextualists, Kristeva and Barthes, were vehemently opposed. On the other hand, Jenny's illusions of grandeur 'harmonize' with traditionally

45

cherished notions of the artistic textY Rejecting Kristeva's radicalized notion of intertextuality (of whose consequences he is aware, as his discussion of Burroughs shows) and the linguistically formalized version of M. Arrive (1973) as weIl, Jenny favours "an approach that is at once more naive and more concrete, which apprehends the text as the material object it is" (50) - the 'material art object', that is, of traditionalliterary studies. Completely in line with these conservative inhibitions, J enny favours dear intertextual demarcations ("we propose to speak of intertextuality only when there can be found in a text elements exhibiting a structure created previous to the text" [40]) and even suggests an intertextual taxonomy based on rhetorical figures (54-58).19 He tries to ensure the 'concreteness' of his approach by the extensive application of his notion of intertextuality to exemplary texts. In line with Jenny's proposals but further restricting the original Kristevian idea, some German scholars have tried in recent years to make the concept of intertextuality more operational (cf. the contributions to Broich/Pfister 1985 in particular). The theoretical consequences are deplorable. One representative case is M. Lindner (1985), who aims at a unified model of description in order to point out the intertextual semantic enrichment possible through a rearrangement of textual elements in an intertextual way (117-119). She draws the methodologicalline by complaining that much poststructural reasoning lacks "terminologische Sauberkeit und logische Stringenz [terminological tidiness and logical stringency]" (199, note 5; my translation). Her own approach, on the other hand, fails to consider its own status. The author is so bent on system building that the self-reflexive character of any (critical) intertextual procedure as demanded by Kristeva is simply ignored. (Once she does speak of the necessary consideration of ideological implications [133J but it is highly likely that these considerations are strongly related to the presumed authorial intentions also mentioned.) Perhaps the best way to assess a more conservative, applicable version of intertextuality is by looking at the results it yields. In this regard the actual exampIes of intertextual interpretative practice cast some doubt on the usefulness of a restricted notion of intertextuality. Arecent article by W. Füger (1989) (who explicitly refers to the Broich orientation as the one developed furthest [179, note 2]) unwittingly makes these deficiencies dear. Füger presents an interesting 'intertextual' reading of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but except for his general theoretical prelude on intertextuality (179-185), the author could have dispensed with the term altogether. 20 At best, the concept of intertextuality in his 18

19

20

Jenny displays an affinity with traditional romantic notions of text as organic entity when he worries metaphorically ab out "[i]ntertextual transplanting [which] creat[es] survival problems for the receiving organism" (50). The cryptic explanation of 'intertextuality' und er the heading of "Rhetoric" by Dupriez (1986, 829 f.) can be regarded a result of such a suggestion. An interesting, though no less disappointing, comparison is provided by Horan's article on the same topic. His attempt "to add to an appreciation of the biographical and psychologie al dimen-

r 46

case serves to justify a scholarly proceeding via associations. But does interpretative ingenuity evolve into a scholarly sound procedure by being backed by a fashionable jargon? All in all, if this is intertextual scholarship then we have not advanced very far since the times an artide could address the question: "George Peele andA Farewell to Arms: A Thematic Tie?" (Mazzaro 1960). Equally doubtful as to its 'intertextual' character, but for somewhat different reasons, is arecent interpretation of Proust's Recherche by M. Riffaterre (1986), who normally carries on the business of dose reading in the name of intertextuality (cf. Morgan 1985,24-28).21 In this particular essay he offers a most interesting psychoanalytically inspired account of some basic features of the novel. Yet he takes pains to distinguish his approach from a psychoanalytical one that (according to an outdated notion) supposedly has nothing better to do than point out sexual symbols and the like. But why doak an interpretation which dearly follows psychoanalytical insights with the label 'intertextual'? What then is 'applied intertextual criticism'? Is the inter text just a means of critical montage as in Hassan (1984)? Or does intertextual practice consist in an exegesis of the arch-intertextualists, such as in Mortimer's (1989) extended annotations to Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text? Conde & Jacobi (1986) use the label for computerized explorations of word fields. Arecent contribution to studies in language acquisition employs the term 'intertextuality' to describ~ a feature of children's narrative practices (Wolf & Hicks 1989). This is not the place to discuss such divergent individual examples of 'applied intertextuality' extensively. I leave it to anyone interested in practical aspects of the idea to make his or her own sense. Yet one thing is obvious: 'practical intertextuality' appears to be an infiuitely pliable concept,especially when it comes to incorporating it into one'~ own critical vocabulary. Thus, it is all too easily divested of any heuristic value. And there's absolutely no legal redress! Faced with the edecticism with which the term 'intertextuality' is currently applied, one would have to agree with Bennett (1987), who views 'intertextuality' - even in the Tel Quelian version - as expressive of a text fetishism (249 f.), in a Marxist sense of the word, signalling nothing more than a "consumer revolution in literary theory" (249).

21

Bypassing Intertextuality

H.-P. Mai

sions of [Orwell's] involvement in the writing of the novel" (1987,54) through recourse to an Orwellian essay on school experiences is almost indistinguishable from tradition al biographical criticism. For further criticisms of the Riffaterrean version of intertextuality (Riffaterre 1978), cf. Freadman (1983); Frow (1986,151-155); de Man (1986). A 'practical' intertextual controversy can be witnessed in the competing interpretations of Flaubert's Madame Bovary by Riffaterre (1981) and Rothfield (1985).

47

6. The Critical Context (11) Is it then useless to talk of 'intertextual scholarship'? Obviously, even conservative intertextualists agree with Kristeva's observation that in one artistic text there coexist, more or less visibly, several other texts. This seems to be the minimal consensus in intertextual studies. A scholarly concern proceeding from such an assumption then would, first of all, have to identify and disentangle these texts. This is wh at tradition al textual criticism in general and source-influence studies in particular did and still do. Recent intertextual scholars with a taxonomic bent have tried to integrate this traditional preoccupation into a structural supermodel. Yet this, by itself, does not ensure any intellectual advances: the results are still of an archiv al nature, the outcome of basically positivistic endeavours. What Kristeva originally envisioned, though, was a new kind of hermeneutics. But what in it was actually innovative, aside from the fancy jargon? Traditionalliterary studies are work-(and author-)oriented. They hold that literary works are something fit to be respected, if not admired, something authoritative. In their critical effort they aim to find, eventually, the one correct meaning of a complex but unified message (the 'reliable text'). Even if they are hermeneutically aware that this one message is never to be fixed because the historical process of appropriation of meaning is never to be halted, they still do not give up the attempt to approximate the 'actual' meaning. Traditional hermeneutics as weIl as positivistic studies are persistent in their quest for positive knowledge. They do not give in to wholesale relativity nor do they relegate the production of literary meaning completely to the recipient. They hold that meaning exists apart from meaning producers. Hence, literary scholarship's basic function is to reaffirm a system of cherished aesthetic notions of long standing (cf. Ruthven 1979,passim). Those approaches to literat ure which modeled themselves, alternatively, on the natural sciences were only a partial challenge to established literary studies. The assumption that it is worthwhile to concern yourself with the analysis of literature per se was not principally doubted. The aim of these literary 'scientists' was to achieve as much systemic control over the literary text as other sciences would like to attain over other phenomena of life. Clearly, in the 1960s the traditional contemplative self-sufficiency of literary studies had been undermined for various reasons. But the radical doubt that was to shake the epistemic foundations of the academic establishment was introduced only by minds bent on political activism. The deliberately political criticism of Tel Quel denounced the social function of academic ('bourgeois') criticism as complicit with a social system of real injustices. Traditional criticism's tendency to accumulate 'precious' meaning was polemically equated with the capitalist's hoarding of profits. Humanist culture was accused of cultural hegemony~

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Yet what Tel Quel had in common with traditional academic criticism was the high regard in which art was principally held. In this, the two groups' relationship was analogous to a typical configuration of modernist and avantgarde art: Where the modernists sought to affirm the relative autonomy of the 'cultural' sphere - asserting its tradition al constitutive values (of creativity, imagination, individuality, autonomy, etc.) against the values of the market-place - the avant-garde sought to undermine theideology of aesthetic autonomy, to collapse the cultural back into the socio-economic, in order to translate such values into social praxis. (Bennett 1987, 247)

Some Tel Quelians inflated the importance of the 'art text' even beyond modernist notions of it, as it seemed to be not only a means to escape the alienated existence enforced by existing social conditions but an agent of actual social change. The 'transcendent', 'liberating', 'ennobling' function of art was not actually questioned but rather reaffirmed, despite all radicalist rhetoric. (The 'end of art' was being proclaimed by different quarters [cf. e.g. Hohendahl 1980].) Yet the poststructural critic/artist had to realize the revolutionary potential of art in a way radically different from established procedures. To be subversive, the new 'textual practice' first of all had to undermine the idea of a unified, accumulative sense. It, therefore, had to point out, retrospectively, contradictions and fissures within the seeming unity (and occasional harmony) of traditional art. Moreover, these critics advocated deli berate (post-)modernist disruptions of meaning in contemporary and future art practice, the refusal to make (fixed) sense. In the last resort a new semantic fluidity was favoured, which abolished all differences between (privileged) semantic producers and (receptive) consumers/critics. These poststructural notions l;tave been called into question with good, but all too often only antagonistically self-assertive, arguments (cf. e.g. Hempfer 1976). Yet is 'textual practice' of the poststructuralistldeconstructive kind the only consequence that can be elaborated from Kristeva's original concept of an alternative hermeneutics? There are, after all, some scholars who acknowledge the poststructuralist perplexities without succumbing to mere deconstructive theorizing. In this regard, J. L. Lemke (1983; 1985) is to be mentioned, an author who tries to elaborate an intertextual analytical concept with the help of the linguistic approach suggested by M. A. K. Halliday. T. Threadgold (1987; 1988) conducts his inquiries on a similar plane. The problem with these attempts is that any thorough examiHation of a sufficiently complex text along their lines apparently makes for a critical vocabulary and diagrams of increasing incomprehensibility (e.g. Lemke 1983; Threadgold 1988). But these contributions still have to be assessed by other professed intertextualists. There are also some literary scholars (W. Rewar [1989]; W.R. Paulson [1988]; G.L. Stonum [1977; 1989]) who res ort to cybernetic theory to reformulate the original Kristeyian concept of an alternative, self-critical hermeneutics of an intertextual nature. This is not the place to discuss their contributions at length; suffice it to say their theoretical suggestions may be able to provide aframework for intertextual studies of an advanced kind.

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A means to alleviate some of the inevitable frustrations arising from contemporary critical intertextual practice (of the theoretical and the applied kind) could be the new hypertext computer technology - if, that is, the theoretical and methodological complexities of the subject matter under discussion are heeded. This technology provides the means to store and interrelate all kinds of information and interpretations and make them almost instantly accessible, thus enabling the creation of intertextual networks of a new kind. 22

7. Hypertext

'Hypertext' is a computer environment which, among other things, allows fast non-sequential access to large amounts of loosely structured texts in electronic form. 23 (Good first introductions are provided by Fiderio 1988 and Franklin 1989; for a very thorough presentation consult Conklin 1987.) Yankelovich et al. (1988) describe it as follows: "In essence, a hypertext system allows authors or groups of authors to link information together, create paths through a body of related material, annotate existing texts, and create notes that direct readers to either bibliographic data or the body of the referenced text" (81). ~ hypertext file can initially be conceived of as a textual database. Differing from other database management systems, hypertext embeds links within the original text to other physically unrelated texts. Thus, the computer user can immediately jump from one text to another. For example, in its simplest form such a file can be used to store the text of apoern. Once this is done, textual variants, explanations of unusual words, annotations or references of any kind can be attached to this textual item. These secondary texts are located in another 'area' of the hypertext structure but can be called up instantly. Secondary textual segments can, in turn, be linked to other secondary textual segments, or comments can be appended to them. A reference to a secondary source can be linked to the original text (as long as it is available in electronic form, which will increasingly be the case) or even the relevant segment of the referenced text. Of course, informal queries for single expressions can also be conducted, which allows for a serendipitous strategy of inquiry, very often appropriate to humanities scholars in particular. In addition, some hypertext systems are not restricted to verbal information only. They are able to store pictures, sounds, even animations and also can control external devices such as video recorders, CD players, etc. Their linking capacity can be extended to these kinds of information and.information sources as well. (A practical hypertext application in

22

23

Some authors already expressly try to make use of the term 'intertextual' in conjunction with computer~supported literary studies (e.g. Corns 1986; Paulson 1989, 295). Incidentally, this "hypertext" has nothing whatsoever to do with Genette's (1982) use of the term.

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view is again a political one: who provides, under which conditions, which kind of access to whom. Current database management is conspicuously concerned with questions as to wh ich 'privileges' are accorded to which users. Only an accomplished hacker would be 'intertextually free' (in a Barthesian sense) to follow up any kind of textual connection - but, at the same time, subject to legal restrictions wh ich try to secure the private property of information. So it will not happen automatically that "an electronic text deconstructs itself - with no help from the theorists" (Bolter 1989, 138). The reader as critically constructive agency will not become ~uperfluous. Yet hypertext technology's non-linear character helps to counter any kind of dogmatism. And the electronic texture may provide us indeed with a flexibility we have never had before because

literary studies is described by Landow [1989].) Furthermore, a hypertext system can wörk as a stand-alone solution but it also allows teamwork (Halasz 1988,848-850; Irish & Trigg 1989; Trigg & Suchman 1989) and basically even encourages it. Although there are still many conceptual perplexities (Halasz 1988; Raymond & Tompa 1988; Byles 1988) and there will always be relative technical restrictions for individuals, the technical concept as such is generally acclaimed. And even if grand visions of a world-wide scholarly on-line cooperation will not come true overnight, the acceptance of such a relatively sophisticated and commercially wide-spread hypertext system as Apple's HyperCard allows easy data exchange for those who are interested in it. In any case, hypertext systems certainly could be a viable technical solution for those intertextualists interested in pointing out interconnections in large archives of diverse kin~s o.f text (ve.rbal, visual, and aural) as it allows the construction of comprehenslve mformatlOnal networks. Heim (1987) foresees that in such an environment

[t]he author may try to dominate us eompletely by employing every typographie (and linguistie) deviee to show what is important in his text: we as readers are not in any ease obliged to believe hirn. Organization is interpretation, and we may deeide that his ideas lend themselves to another organization altogether. (Bolter 1989,137)

[e]ross referenees [ ... ] beeome identieal with textuality, not just proximate and mutually ~n­ flueneing texts but texts eoresident and in the same interaetive element and eapable of bemg direetly juxtaposed or superimposed. [ ... ] The sense of a sequentialliterature of distinet, physically separate texts is supplanted by a eontinuous textuality. (162)

But Heim also worries about the consequences. His critique of such a computerized 'intertextuality' (211-213) covers exactly those sensitive issues which played an important role in the initial formulation of the intertextual ~oncept through Kristeva and in later poststructural approaches: truth/authonty/personal vision/stability/composure vs. curiosity/mental excitement/unlimited combinatory possibilities/a creative superabundance with schizoid undertones. The computer can bring aboqt only an apparent resolution of these perplexities:

51

\

And reorganization can be accomplished relatively easily. Eventually, it will all depend on whether "the pro gram allows the reader to make changes in the text or to add his own connections (as some hypertext systems do)" (142). Finally, one should remember that suggestions - by a pro gram designer - as to which path( s) to follow can doubtlessly be very helpful. Guidance through the intertextual computer network may be even indispensible in a situation, such as the present one, which is marked by a veritable flood of information. Here it will again become necessary for the user to distinguish between helpful hints and manipulation. In this regard, too, a critical attitude will not become obsolete. And this also ultimately means that without/outside the mind there is no intertext relevant to uso

[In] the eleetrie element [ ...] the logie of manipulative power reigns supreme.1t beeomes possible to treat the entire verbal life of the human raee as one eontinuous, anonymous eode without

essential referenee to human presenee behind it, wh ich neither feels it must answer to anyone nor necessarily awaits an answer from anyone. (213; myemphasis)

Whether this state of electronic affairs resembles something like "Nietzsche' s description of nihilism as astate of indetermination wherein everything is permitted - and as a result nothing is chosen deeply, authentically, and existentially" (211) is debatable. But it is certainly a pertinent observation that in this new 'intertextual' medium "text [e.g. literature] is increasingly experienced as data" (213), i.e. as "only one unvalorized variant" of text (Kristeva 1986 a, 87) which will again evoke the well-known (and not completely unfounded) uneasiness of more traditionalliterary scholars. On the other hand, as Bolter (1989) points out, "the autonomy of the electronic text is only apparent. Behind the chan ging words and structure lies a program, and behind the program a human programmer" (139) - not to mention the hardware owner. The most important question from a Kristevian point of

8. Summary In the foregoing discussion it was argued that two contradictory definitions of intertextuality are prevalent and at war with each other. A poststructural approach uses the concept as aspringboard for associative speculations ab out semiotic and cultural matters in general. On the other hand, traditionalliterary studies have seized upon the term to integrate their investigative interests in structures and interrelations of literary texts under a comprehensive, and fashionably sounding, catch-all term. These divergent interpretative interests cannot be reconciled theoretically. At its least presumptuous, the word 'intertextuality' merely indicates that one text refers to or is present in another one. Such a linguistic short cut is convenient but tends to become predominantly ornamental- and hence is not particularly conducive to a better understanding. Yet with all the various forms of appropriation of the term, one important initial (Kristevian) insight must not be förgotten: that literature is (also) medi-

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ated through extra-literary discourses - which constitute the actual challenge for intertextual studies of a distinct kind. Any merely intra-literary, intra-linguistic taxonomie attempt will serve mainly archival purposes , and even these in a slightly antiquated fashion. If one desires a contemporary practical elaboration of the concept one should perhaps devote one's attention to hypertext computer systems. But most 'practical' literary scholars may not be content to do this because it presupposes a willingness to part, to an extent, with the traditional fetish 'literature' and to subsume literary texts, at least for a time, under the much less intriguing heading of information.

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"The Systematics of a Non-System: Julia Kristeva's Revisionary Semioti~s." AmericanJournal ofSemiotics 5,133-150. Broich, Ulrich & Manfred Pfister, eds. 1985 Intertextualität: Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Broich, Ulrich 1985 "Zur Einzeltextreferenz. " In Broich & Pfister, eds., 48-52. Bruce, Don 1983 "Bibliographie annotee: Ecrits sur l'intertextualite." Texte 2, 217-258. Brütting, Richard 1976 "ecriture" und "texte": Die französische Literaturtheorie "nach dem Strukturalismus": Kritik traditioneller Positionen und Neuansätze. Bonn: Bouvier. Byles, Torrey 1988 "A Context for Hypertext : Some Suggested Elements of Style." Wilson Library Bulletin 63 (Nov), 60-62. Carroll, David 1983 "The Alterity of Discourse: Form, History, and the Question of the Political in M. M. Bakhtin." Diacritics 13,65-83. Carron, J ean-Claude 1988 "Imitation and Intertextuality in the Renaissance." New Literary History 19, 565-579. Conde, Claude & DanielJacobi 1986 "L'indexation lexicale des contextes des termes pivots dans un corpus intertextuel de vulgarisation scientifique." In Etienne Brunet, ed. Mhhodes quantitatives et informatiques dans Ntude des textes: Colloque International CNRS, Universite de Nice, 5-8juin 1985 en hommage aCharies Muller. Geneve/Paris: Slatkine-Champion, 207-219. Conklin, J eH 198 7 "Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey." IEEE Computer 20 (Sept), 17-41. Corns, Thomas N. 1986 "Literary Theory and Computer-based Criticism: Current Problems and Future Prospects." In Etienne Brunet, ed. Mühodes quantitatives et informatiques dans Ntude des textes: Colloque International CNRS. Universite de Nice, 5-8 juin 1985 en hommage a Charles Muller. Geneve/Paris: Slatkine-Champion, 221-227. Coward, Rosalind & J ohn Ellis 1977 Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject. London/Henley/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dällenbach, Lucien 1976 "Intertexte et autotexte. " Pohique 7/27, 282-296. Davidson, Michael 1983 "Discourse in Poetry: Bakhtin and Extensions of the Dialogical." In Michael Palmer, ed. Code of Signals: Recent W,·itings in Poetics. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 143-150. deMan, Paul 1986 "Hypogram and Inscription." The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 27-53 (orig. 1981). Dupriez, Bernard 1986 "The Semiotics of Rhetoric: Definition." In Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Encyclopedic Dictionary ofSemiotics. 2 vols. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 819-831. Ette, Ottmar . 1985 "Intertextualität: Ein Forschungsbericht mit literatursoziologischen Anmerkungen." Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 9, 497-522.

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Hauff, Jürgen 1985 "Hermeneutik." In Jürgen Hauff et al. Methodendiskussion: Arbeitsbuch zur Literaturwissenschaft. Vol. 2: Hermeneutik - Marxismus. Königstein/Ts.: Athenäum, 5th ed., 1-45 (orig. 1971). Heim, Michiel 1987 Electric Language: A Philosophical Study ofWord Processing. New Haven/London: Yale UP. Hempfer, Klaus W. 1976 Poststrukturale Texttheorie und narrative Praxis: Tel Quel und die Konstitution eines Nouveau Nouveau Roman. München: W. Fink. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe 1980 "Politisierung der Kunsttheorie: Zur ästhetischen Diskussion nach 1965." In P. M. Lützeler & E. Schwarz, eds. Deutsche Literatur in der BRD seit 1965. Königstein/ Ts.: Athenäum, 282-299. Horan, Chris 1987 "An Inter-Textual Approach to the Teaching of George OrwelI's Nineteen EightyFour.» CRUX: AJournal on the Teaching of English 21 (Feb), 47-54. Huyssen, Andreas 1988 "Mapping the Postmodern." After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. London: Macmillan, 178-221. Irish, Peggy M. & Randall H. Trigg 1989 "Supporting Collaboration in Hypermedia: Issues and Experiences." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 40, 192-199. J ameson, Fredric 1985 "Periodizing the 60s." In Sohnya Sayres et al., eds. The 60s Without Apology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2nd ed., 178-209. J ardine, Alice 1986 "Opaque Texts and Transparent Contexts: The Political Difference of Julia Kristeva." In N ancy K. MilIer, ed. The Poetics of Gender. N ew York: Columbia UP, 96-116. J enny, Laurent 1982 "The Strategy of Form." In Tzvetan Todorov, ed. French Literary Theory Today: A Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge UP/Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de I'Homme, 34-63 (orig. 1976). Kao, Shuhsi 1981 "Paradise Lost? An Interview with Philippe SolIers." SubStance no. 30, 31-50. Kristeva, J ulia 1968 "Problemes de la structuration du texte." In Tel Quel, ed. Theorie d'ensemble. Paris: Seuil,298-317. 1970 Le texte du roman: Approche semiologique d'une structure discursive transformationelle. The Hague: Mouton. 1975 "The System and the Speaking Subject." In Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. The Tell-Tale Sign: A Survey ofSemiotics. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press, 47-55 (orig. 1973). 1980a "The Bounded Text." Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Leon S. Roudiez. Oxford: B. BlackwelI, 36-63 (orig. 1968). 1980b "From One Ideniity to an Other." Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Leon S. Roudiez. Oxford: B. BlackwelI, 124-147 (orig. 1975). 1986a "Semiotics: A Critical Science and/or a Critique of Science." The Kristeva Reader. Ed. TorilMoi. Oxford: B. BlackwelI, 75-88 (orig. 1968). 1986 b "Word, Dialogue and Novel." The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. Oxford: B. BlackwelI, 34-61 (orig. 1966). 1986c "Revolution in Poetic Language." The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. Oxford: B. BlackwelI, 89-136 (orig. 1974).

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LaCapra, Dominick 1983 "Bakhtin, Marxism, and the Carnivalesque." Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language. Ithaca/London: Cornell UP, 291-324. Lachmann, Renate, ed. 1982 Dialogizität. München: W. Fink. Lachmann, Renate 1984 "Ebenen des Intertextualitätsbegriffs." In Stierle & Warning, eds., 133-138. Landow, George P. 1989 "Hypertext in Literary Education, Criticism, and Scholarship." Computers & the H umanities 23, 173 -198. Lehmann, Jürgen 1977 "Ambivalenz und Dialogizität: Zur Theorie der Rede bei Michail Bachtin. " In Friedrich A. Kittler & Horst Turk, eds. Urszenen: Literaturwissenschaft als Diskursanalyse und Diskurskritik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 355-380. Leitch, Vincent B. 1983 Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction. New York: Columbia UP. Lemke, J ay L. "Thematic Analysis: Systems, Structures, and Strategies." Recherches Semiotiquesl 1983 Semiotic Inquiry 3/2,159-187. "Ideology, Intertextuality, and the Notion ofRegister." In James D. Benson & Wil1985 liam S. Greaves, eds. Systemic Perspectives on Discourse: Selected Theoretical Papers from the 9th International Systemic Workshop [Toronto, 1982]. Norwood, N.].: Ablex Publishing, 275-294. Lewis, Philip E. 1974 "Revolutionary Semiotics." Diacritics 4, 28-32. Lindner, Monika 1985 "Integrationsformen der Intertextualität." In Broich & Pfister, eds., 116-135. Mailloux, Steven 1982 Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study ofAmerican Fiction. Ithaca/London: Cornell up. Martens, Gunter 1989 "Was ist ein Text? Ansätze zur Bestimmung eines Leitbegriffs der Textphilologie." Poetica 21,1-25. Mazzaro, J erome L. 1960 "George Peele andA Farewell toArms: A Thematic Tie?" Modern Language Notes 75,118-119. Moi, Toril "Marginality and Subversion: Julia Kristeva." SexuallTextual Politics: Feminist 1985 Literary Theory. London/New York: Methuen, 150-173. "Introduction." In Julia Kristeva. The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. Oxford: 1986 Basil Blackwell, 1-22. Morgan, Thais E. 1985 "ls There an Intertext in This Text?: Literary and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intertextuality." AmericanJournal ofSemiotics 3/4,1-40. Mortimer, Armine Kotin 1989 The Gentlest Law: Roland Barthes's "The Pleasure of the Text". New YorkiBernl FrankfurtiParis : P. Lang. Nöth, Winfried 1985 "Textsemiotik." Handbuch der Semiotik. Stuttgart: Metzler, 455-460. Nye,Andrea 1987 "Woman Clothed with the Sun: Julia Kristeva and the Escape from/to Language." Signs 12, 664-686.

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Paulson, William R. 1988 The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Information. Ithaca/London: Cotnell UP. 1989 "Computers, Minds, and Texts: Preliminary Reflections." New Literary History 20, 291-303. Pechey, Graham 1982 "Bakhtin, Marxism, and Post-Structuralism." In The Politics ofTheory: Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature, July 1982. Colchester: University of Essex, 234-247. Pfister, Manfred 1985 a "Konzepte der Intertextualität." In Broich & Pfister, eds., 1-30. 1985 b "Zur Systemreferenz. " In Broich & Pfister, eds., 52-58. Ping Hui, Liao 1983/84 "Intersection and Juxtaposition of Wor(l)ds." Tamkang Review 14, 395-411. Plett, Heinrich F. 1985 "Sprachliche Konstituenten einer intertextuellen Poetik." In Broich & Pfister, eds., 78-98. Popovic, Anton 1980 "Inter-Semiotic-Inter-Literary Translation." In Bela Köpeczi et al., eds. Proceedings of the 8th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association. Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Kunst & Wissen-Erich Bieber, 763-765. Pugliese, Abel Orlando 1988 "Von der Hermeneutik zur Text-, Kontext- und Intertextanalyse: Eine Reflexion über literaturwissenschaftliche Methodologie und Methodik." In Ilse NoltingHauff & Joachim Schulze, eds. Das fremde Wort: Studien zur Interdependenz von Texten: Festschrift für Kar! Maurer zum 60. Geburtstag. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 17-50. Ray, William 1984 "Roland Barthes: Subverting History 1 Suspending the Self." Literary Meaning: From Phenomenology to Deconstruction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 170-185. Raymond, Darrell R. & Frank W. Tompa 1988 "Hypertext and the Oxford English Dictionary." Communications of the ACM 31, 871-879. Rewar, Walter 1976 "Notes for a Typology of Culture." Semiotica 18, 361-377. 1989 "On Hierarchy, Extension, and Boundary in the Cybernetic Modeling of the Literary Text." Semiotica 75, 229-255. Ricoeur, Paul 1981 a "What Is a Text? Explanation and Understanding." Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation. Ed. & tr. John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1 Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de I'Homme, 145-164 (orig. 1970). 1981 b "Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology." Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation. Ed. & tr.John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1 Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de I'Homme, 63-100 (orig. 1973). Riffaterre, Michael 1978 Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington/London: Indiana UP. 1981 "Flaubert's Presuppositions." Diacritics 11,2-11. 1986 "The Intertextual Unconscious." Critical Inquiry 13,371-385. Röder, Petra 1989 . "Po eta Faber: Der frühromantische poiesis-Gedanke und die Idee der cfreien bewußten Tätigkeit' bei Karl Marx." Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft & Geistesgeschichte 63,521-546.

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Rommetveit, Ragnar 1988 "On Literacy and the Myth of Literal Meaning." In Roger Säljö, ed. The Written World: Studies in Literate Thought and Action. Berlin: Springer, 13-40. Rothfield, Lawrence 1985 "From Semiotic to Discursive Intertextuality: The Case of Madame Bovary." Novel 19,57-81.

Ruprecht, Hans-George 1983 "Intertextualite." Texte 2, 13-22. Rusinko, Elaine 1979 "Intertextuality: The Soviet Approach to Subtext." Dispositio 4, 213-235. Russell, Charles 1980 "The Context of Concept." In Harry R. Garvin, ed. Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP I London/Toronto: Associated University Presses, 181-193. Ruthven, K. K. 1979 CriticalAssumptions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Schabert, Ina 1983 "Interauktorialität." Deutsche VierteljahresschriJt für Literaturwissenschaft & Geistesgeschichte 57, 679-701. Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte 1988 "Text." In Ulrich Ammon et al., eds. Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of , the Science of Language and Society. 2 vols. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1205-1215.

Schmid, Wolf & Wolf-Dieter Stempel, eds. 1983 Dialog der Texte: Hamburger Kolloquium zur Intertextualität. Wien: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. , Schoeck, RichardJ. 1984 Intertextuality and Renaissance Texts. Bamberg: H. Kaiser. Schulte-Middelich, Bernd 1985 "Funktionen intertextueller Textkonstitution. " In Broich & Pfister, eds., 197-242. Seamon, Roger ,. 1989 "Poetics Against Itself: On the Self-Destruction of Modern Scientific Criticism." PMLA 104,294-305. Selden, J ohn 1868 Table-Talk (1689). Ed. Edward Arber. London: English Reprints. Seung, T.K. 1982 Structuralism and Hermeneutics. New York: Columbia UP. Shukman, Ann 1980 "Between Marxism and Formalism: The Stylistics of Mikhail Bakhtin." Comparative Criticism, 221-234. Stierle, Karlheinz & Rainer Warning, eds. 1984 Das Gespräch. München: W. Fink. Stierle, Karlheinz 1983 "Werk und Intertextualität." In Schmid & Stempel, eds., 7-26. Stonum, Gary Lee 1977 "For a Cybernetics of Reading." Modern Language Notes 92, 945-968. 1989 "Cybernetic Explanation as a Theory of Reading." N ew Literary History 20, 397-410.

Swingewood, Alan 1986 Sociological Poetics and Aesthetic Theory. Basingstoke/London: Macmillan. Tallis, Raymond 1988 Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory. Basingstoke/London: Macmillan.

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Tel Quel, eds. 1968 Theorie d'ensemble. Paris: Seuil. Threadgold, Terry 1987 "Changing the Subject." In Ross Steele & Terry Threadgold, eds. Language Topics: Essays in Honourof Michael Halliday. Vol. 2. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:John Benjamins, 549-597. 1988 "What Did Milton Say Belial Said and Why Don't the Critics Believe Hirn?" In James D. Benson & MichaelJ. Cummings & William S. Greaves, eds. Linguistics in a Systemic Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 331-392. Trigg, Randall H. & Lucy A. Suchman 1989 "Collaborative Writing in NoteCards." Hypertext: Theory into Practice. Ed. Ray McAleese. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 45-61. Turkle, Sherry 1978 Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution. New York: Basic Books. Ulmer, Gregory L. 1983 "The Object of Post-Criticism." In HaI Foster, ed. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, Wash.: Bay Press, 83-110. Weimann, Robert 1985 "Textual Identity and Relationship: A Metacritical Excursion into History." In Mario J. Valdes & Owen Miller, eds. Identity of the Literary Text. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 274-293. White, Allon 1984 "Bakhtin, Sociolinguistics and Deconstruction." In Frank Gloversmith, ed. The Theory of Reading. Brighton: Harvester Press I Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble,

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Wolf, Dennie & Deborah Hicks 1989 "The Voices within Narratives: The Development ofIntertextuality in Young Children's Stories." Discourse Processes 12, 329-351. Yankelovich, Nicole & BernardJ. Haan & Norman K. Meyrowitz & Steven M. Drucker 1988 "Intermedia: The Concept and the Construction of a Seamless Information Environment." IEEE Computer 21 Oan), 81-96. Zappa, Frank 1974 "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)." Roxy & Elsewhere. Discreet, DIS 89200. Zepp, Evelyn H. 1982 "The Criticism of Julia Kristeva: A New Mode of Critical Thought." Romanic Review 73, 80-97. Zurbrugg, Nicholas 1984 "Burroughs, Barthes, and the Limits of Intertextuality." Review of Contemporary Fiction 4,86-107.

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analogy, and by the same token the above representation of the INTERTEXT, is absent in the innermost recesses of its very presence. Like an idee fixe, the salient and intriguing feature of spreading 'intertextual connections' is their overrunning 'everywhereness' in the open heterotopia of the absent. Images of ambiguity, vistas on methods of disambiguation, perspectives on ... HANS-GEORGE RUPRECHT

... grapes with no seed but sea-foam, Ivy in scupper-hole. (Pound, Cantos H, 1. 60-61).

The Reconstruction of Intertextuality aMaxPaul 1. Interlocking Analogies

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i

One would be hard put, irrespective of a doute cartesien about assertory cognizing in general, to find a more appropriate image of current research in/on INTERTEXTUALITY 1 than the rankly growing and vertiginiously climbing ivy vi ne (see the bibliographies by Bruce 1983 and in Broich & Pfister 1985, 349-359). Correspondingly, it might be hypothesized that the rhizophagous growth (deep structure?) and the rhizomorphous branching (surface structure?) of the INTERTEXT present the appearance of a living organism. Thus, one could say, and no matter whether the question is or was - how to construct/deconstruct, logically, the pragmatic, syntactic and semantic (in/trans )ference of 'meanings' from TEXTS to TEXTS: 'Node on node', then, cast in the 'primal' FORM OF TEXTUALITY. And why not, following Goethe in "Die Metamorphose der Pflanze"? (For a discussion of Goethe's ideas 9n "Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt" as in "Urworte, orphisch" (1817/1820) in respect to present-day life systems research and the genetic code, s'ee Blumenberg 1981, 372-409; Amrine 1987). As if the INTERTEXT were in astate of dynamic nonequilibrium, - evergreening (cf. Babloyantz 1986, foreword by 1. Prigogine). Like the flourishing ivy vine, whose leaves eventually dry up the closer they are to the ground while its life sustaining foliage contributes, regardless of the seasonal changes in the environment, to the formation of new offshoots, a LITERARY INTERTEXT in particular displays, be it continuously, at intervals or cyclically here and there, many a fresh 'leaflet' together with the yellowing pages of some ancient, so-called 'classic text'. Inevitably, a captious critic of these analogies will question the observer's uncertain perception of the phenomenon. At present, it might suffice to consider Sartre's (1940, 31, 98 ff.) observations according to which the object of an 1

It is advisable to read the notions printed in sm all caps with the critical awareness of their problematic belonging to the domain of knowledge, which is under scrutiny; that is to say, there is an INTERTEXTUALITY, and INTERTEXT, etc. if and only if their variables can be quantified in terms of predicate logic. As far as their occurrence in hypothetical statements is concerned, it should be understood that they are not necessarily subjected to logical bivalence.

Stretching the biological analogy a little further one could say, tongue in cheek because the hedera is sacred to Bacchus (and hence to Dionysus the patron of ritual ecstasy, drama and the carnelevarium), that the meta-intertextual discourse tends to be 'flowerly' intertwined with the conceptual circumlocutions for its very loquacity. Its semantic ambiguities (propositional, categorial, structural; cf. Hirst 1987) in relation to the intertextual process per se connect with the focus on the 'edges' and the 'borderline' phenomena (affinities, resemblances, contrasts, shades of difference, etc.) of the meaning productive process. This can be illustrated in terms of an emblematic motto taken from Ovid' s Metamorphoses (lib. VI, v. 127). It stands by reference to Arachne's weaving skills to intertextual practice in general: , (a) ultima pars telae, tenui circumdata limbo, nexilibus flores hederis habet intertextos.

If it is the case that this image tells us something about the artistry of Arachne's mounting the intertextum, itwould appear, then, that one could consider Ovid's comment on Minerva's guile as the epitome of an "intertextual frame" (Eco 1979,21). In fact, he is overcoding her false colors, i.e., 'peaceful' warnings to Arachne, her challenger in the art of intertextual design. Let us look at Ovid's (Met., lib. VI, v. 101) framing description: (b) circuit extremas oleis pacalibus oras, is modus est operisque sua facit arbore finem.

The first point to note is that both strings of poetic discourse are concisely referring to the borderline phenomena of closure: (a) "ultima pars telae"; (b) "extremas oras". Furthermore, they are comparable in respect to their suggestive (intradiscursive) passing reference to the forms of expression and of content. While these forms shape the web by tradition ("antiquas telas" being implied [ibid., v. 145] and 'intertextually' by tracing ancient subject matter 'downwards' to the present - "et vetus in tela deducitur argumentum" [ibid., v. 69; my emphasis J), the expression-form and the content-form do in fact determine the transtextual meaning effects as well as the mythemic semiosis of the woven, poetically transcoded textures. But notice the difference between (a) and (b) as to Ovid's coreferential focus. On the subject of Minerva's craft it is cataphoric insofar as the 'peaceful olive-wreath' prefigures inversely the mortal punishment to be' inflicted on her challenger. Pragmatically speaking, it is of course an interpretative, missive coreferentialization of an emblematic cliche. It functions

i,

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in regard to the reader- and/or listener-oriented narrative as a prolepsis. N ow, as far as Arachne's work is concerned, Ovid's coreferential focus on the JNTERTEXT is strictly anaphoric, that is an implicit representation of her "intertexturai" (- "of or belonging to texture" ([OEDJ) skills. Both are figurae functionally (in the sense of L. Hjelmslev's semiotics) related to each other. And yet, it might be argued, in (a) Ovid hints at the 'nature' and in (b) at the 'significance' of JNTERTEXTUALlTY.

If this is the case, it seems then that more light ought to be shed on the reconstruction of JNTERTEXTUALITY in view of its manifest and latent mo des of existence.

2. Contingencies in Perspective

Everybody knows that the structuralist cognizance of the so-called literary text - What was/is 'literariness' in relation to 'textness'? - and, subsequently, the neo- and poststructuralist critiques of this approach have produced a multiplicity of conceptual clusters. It is also well known that some of them have been intrinsically connected and/or cogently contrasted with the NaTION of intertexKristeva). (Cf. Angenot 1983; Genette 1982; Grivel1982; Jacques tualite 1987; Labarriere 1987; Plett 1985, 1986; Riffaterre 1985 and earlier; Ruprecht 1983, 1986; Somville 1987; Segre 1988; further references in Bruce 1983; Broich & Pfister 1985.) While some literary critics still have the tendency to cast these conceptual clusters to the winds like sapless grapelets which might pollute the hortus conclusus of esthetics, oth~rs keep them stored up in the higher, theoryladen galleries of the "Biblioteca de Babel" where the sustaining framework of reference might eventually crumble into dust. In view, for instance, of the tomprehensive sense T. Eagleton (1983, 138) gives to the 'intertextual' by virtue of what he believes to be the mind-set and the theoretical discourse of the "post-structuralists", many a well-read theoretician of literature will most likely be concerned about this confinement. To shed more light on this background, further discussions are required: epistemological conditions for differentiated propositional attitudes concerning the FJELDS of intertextuality. This is because of the diversified material, the socio- and ideotechnical unfolding of, for example, the 'cinematic', the 'ethnographie', the 'literary', the 'musical' and the 'pictorial' fields of the JNTERTEXT (see references in Morgan 1985), including the field of 'theatre semiotics' (de Toro 1987; 1988). And what about another stumbling block to a model-theoretic discourse on 'intertextuality today', namely the academic interest, the 'Why?' of an intertextual research activity in relation to the professional belief system, be it that of an 'open' or a 'closed' mind (cf. Rokeach 1960)? Even though "intertextual knowledge" (Eco 1979, 21) has been construed, convincingly and/or conjecturally - or < x + fool >

~

< mirror + y > or < y + mirror >

/'

< x = "container" > < - fool >

~

< y = "social group" > < x + Y>

/

< - mirror >

'-...../ < e. g. L 'reoie des femmes > Thus, World's End or Of Mice and Men do not simply quote the Bible or Burns. They also paradigmatically reproduce, for instance, all < y + End> or all < Of + x> patterns. Of Mice and Men thus suggests, beyond its literal or elementary reference to the lines in a poem by Robert Burns, a structural or generic reference to the dignity of philosophical tides simply by beginning the quote with "Of" (from Latin "De"). "Of" plus noun(s) is a syntactic tide paradigm, which serves to enrich the tide quote with a structural reproduction. Both together overcode the follow-

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ing text by Steinbeck, and make it - among other things - a philosophical treatise on the human condition. Other important paradigms are structured by semantic oppositions like new/old, great/little, first/last etc. (Bergengruen 1960,63-70; Volkmann 1967, 1295) and one of the terms is able to evoke intertextually its opposite. Semantic paradigms in mottoes need studying, the examples in Böhm and the commonplace tradition suggest there are such paradigms (e. g. the decorative Victorian "flower" motto; cf. Böhm 1975, 115-122).

sigmatics: the reproduction of the same reference, mainly through tides and names (The System of Dante's Hell; U[ysses), where titles function like names (Hoek 1981,206-243). But tides do not refer to individuals like names do, but to serial products, often mass-produced. Tides containing the word "AIDS" or "American" , for instance, acquire their intertextuali ty only through the fact that they refer to the same referent. Computer-supported full textual search in tide files more often comes up with such co-references than with intertextuality. Are there sigmatic paradigms for mottoes?

Before turning to pragmatics, let met try to sum up. Elementary reproduction and structural reproduction are dialectically connected: the second arises from the first, and serialization leads to increasing levels of abstraction. The further away the new element moves from the established paradigm, its semantic marker(s), the weaker the overcoding and the paradigm, until complete exhaustion and vacuity sets in (cf. Hoek 1981, 196). Each tide thus inscribes itself, knowingly or unknowingly, into one or more historie tide codes within which it posits itself through elementary or structural reproduction, strongly or weakly. Sigmatic, semantic, and syntactic paradigms may form independendy from each other, but where they combine, like in the double tide, they may establish very strong conventions lasting for centuries.

2. History I

Critics have often noted fashions and period styles in tiding and mottoing (Rothe 1970, 299). These changes are intimately connected with the medium carrying the text (Kuhnen 1953; Wilke 1955). But the pragmatics of ti ding cannot be reduced to author-text-reader relations, even if we include the medium. They will have to be related to a larger social and historie context. It is true, much intertextuality derives from the author's expression ("Confessions", "Autobiography", "Letters" etc.) or reader's response ("lustig", "thrilling" etc.; cf. Volkmann 1967, 1177f.) or reference to common objects (e. g. the many books called The Life of George Washington ). Others, mainly generic markers, point at the medium employed (Song, Sermon, Treatise etc.; cf. Kuhnen 1953, 19-25; Hoek 1981, 189 f.). But to get through to the social relevance of tides and mottoes one has to move beyond such narrow communicational functions. Oral cultures know no tides. People refer to texts, stories told or songs sung, through some name or episode, vaguely or clearly stored in their memories. There seems to be no literal quoting, except for some sacred ritual texts, some opening and ending formulas. These formulas create an intertextual framework that allows people to identify the kind of textual situation they are about to enter (Wilke 1955; Wieckenberg 1969, 27-40).

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All this changes in scriptural societies. Intertextuality increases, though restricted to a small group of (mainly religious) scribes. Tides appear and differentiate one manuscript from another. First paradigms begin to form. Scribal conventions for opening and concluding texts replace the old oral formulas. Initial letterings and subscriptions to manuscript illustrations lay the groundwork for the mottoes. Tide slips are inserted into manuscript rolls; lemmata, rubrics, performance indications are added to structure the texts and their readings (Wilke 1955,2-45; Wieckenberg 1969,42-58). Tides are being catalogued. The distinct roles of creator, performer and librarian of texts begin to emerge. Print cultures change everything. The text becomes an increasingly mass-produced commodity, the tide its advertisement. Additional functions of the tide emerge (Hoek 1981, 244-290). A differentiation of book, magazine, newspaper texts sets in, and with it a differentiation of tide codes (Meyer 1987). Length of tides, their placement, graphematic distribution, the linearity and hierarchy of information, the relation of tide and motto, all undergo increasingly rapid semiotic codification; The main period of standardization is the 18th century with its growing markets for reading matter (Rothe 1986, 266). Tide competition, tide fraud, motto plagiarizing lead to regional, national and international copyright agreements, often treating tides like registered trademarks of other commodities (Rothe 1986, 39). Tides are slimmed down, many of their earlier ingredients are exported to the cover, blurb, and back of the book or the frontispiece. Tide changes become intricate bibliographie and economic problems (cf. Genette 1988,696 ff.). Intertextual elements signifying serialization are bracketed as the additional serial tide (Rothe 1986, 15). Tide cataloguing codifies into manuals for librarians and bibliographers. The age of electronic media like films, radio, television, and videotexts freely borrows from print culture and the stage, but also increases top-down hierarchies in tiding. Especially films, intertiding until the development of the sound film, developed highly sophisticated codes of symbolizing power; market production relations in a film or television studio are thoroughly welded to graphematics and syntax. They carry semantic and sigmatic rules of their own. Videotexts open their tide files like any hard-disc computer, from the top on down. Through market research and large computer files, intertextuality achieves new dimensions. Swiftian machines register tides for bestselling books, test salient key words among consumers, and rate attractive syntactic and semantic paradigms for authors in search of a good tide (Rothe 1986,96). New tides are registered through trade papers. It is not possible to register paradigms as trademarks, but longer series will create the same effect. In 1988 the German Ullstein Verlag reserved the right to use intertextual tides like Erotostrojka, Sexystroika, or Sexnost exclusively (Spiegel 52, Dec. 26, 1988, 178). Not only does overcoding itself establish a positive, negative or ambivalent relation to the tradition it quotes. Intertextual tides and mottoes also reproduce with the elements and structures of texts from the past a way of reproducing literature and its functions. What simply began as a device to distinguish and

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identify one manuscript from another, accumulated through print and electronic media other functions (to justify, facilitate, open, structure the text, to produce an interest, inform about the poetic code, and fictionalize the co-text; finally to attract the attention, dispose the reader, ,make hirn value and buy the text). But these functions tend to integrate into functional hierarchies (Hoek 1981,279), serving to dissemble the ongoing reproduction of devices and functions and to make the reader assent to the reproduced values of the dominating ideology (Hoek 1981, 280-287). If tide differentiation increases with competition in different consumer markets, this seems to reflect differences in social and cultural capital as postulated by Bourdieu (Bourdieu/Boltanski 1981). The often noted presence of social tides in literary on es (Volkmann 1967, 1166, 1183, 1232, 1251, 1274f.; Hoek 1981, 120, 126; Bergengruen 1960, 77-92) seems to point at a more than a homonymous coincidence. The asynchronous and conflicting relation between tide and economic position (Bourdieu/Boltanski 1981, 89-90) seems to find its equivalent in the relation between intertextual tide or motto and following text. Textual relations in novels, plays and poems innovate more quickly than their intertextual tides and mottoes. The literary tide stakes a claim for a position in the market, analogous to social tides in the job market. Intertextual tides and motto es carry a cultural and social capital (Bourdieu/Boltanski 1981, 95) that through paradigms establishes systems of classification for such tides. And these classifications reflect (as in reallife) intense social conflicts and negotiations between paradigms and tide codes (Bourdieu/Boltanski 1981, 103 ff.). Intertextuality in tides and motto es thus not only reproduces bits of earlier texts, but also conflicting systems of tide co~es, carrying different social and cultural capital. Intertextuality itself thus b~comes a product and tool of social reproduction, reflecting hierarchies in society and reproducing them at the same time. Let me test and illustrate these rather abstract hypotheses with a few additional exampIes. They come from the chronological chart of tides in the Oxford Companion to American Literature, mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth century. I shall look at tided tides, tides that bring social and literary tides together. Explicit social ranking tends to fade away after the American Revolution to be replaced by the subder ranking through ethnici ty and ancestrallines in American society: The Prince o[ Parthia (1765) Julia and the Illuminated Baron (1800) Bracebridge Hall (1822) "Alnwick Castle" (1822) Koningsmarke (1823) Charles the Second (1824) Richelieu (1826) Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) Fanshawe (1828) Metamora (1829) The Hawks o[ Hawk-Hollow (1835)

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Bianca Visconti (1837) Ferdinand and Isabella (1837) Beauchampe (1842) Major Jones's Courtship (1843) Conspiracy o[ Pontiac (1851) Hiawatha (1855) Francesca da Rimini (1855) The Cassique o[ Kiawah (1859) Miss Ravenel's Conversion (1867) Roderick Hudson (1876) Count Frontenac (1877) Lady o[ the Aroostook (1879) The Grandissimees (1889)

I

The decline of this aristocratic tide code is due to the rise of another: Simon Suggs (1845) Margaret Smith'sJournal (1849) Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) Mrs. Partington (1854) Widow Bedott Papers (1856) Neighbor Jackwood (1857) Courtship o[ Miles Standish (1857) Elsie Venner (1861) Margaret Howth (1862) John Brent (1862) Private Miles O'Reilly (1864) Hans Brinker (1865) Josh Billings (1865) BillArp (1866) Tom Sawyer (1876) Daisy Miller (1876) Roxy (1878) HazelKirke (1880) Uncle Remus (1881) Mr. Isaacs (1882) Huckleberry Finn (1884) etc.

Even without explicit ranking, tide names imply through their intertextuality with social names, caste, class or social standing. Both Roderick H udson and Tom Sawyer appeared in 1876, but belong to two different sigmatic and pragmatic paradigms or social codes. If names condense semantic markers of time, place and social standing, then tide names imply all that and contain a full narrative program for their heroes of the book (cf. Rothe 1986, 13; Hoek 1981, 206-43). Ranking through names ce des to symbolic ranking through traditional emblems of superiority or humility. The change, again, comes with the second half of the 19th century and realism. Compare the following symbolic rankings (I emphasize only the key words): The Marble Faun (1860) Surry of Eagle's Nest (1866) The Gates Ajar (1868)

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The Fair God (1873) Sevenoaks(1875) Hearts of Oak (1879) A WhiteHeron (1886) The Tragic Muse (1890) Flute and Violin (1891) Golden House (1894) The Choir Invisible (1897) Sacred Fount (1901) Wings of the Dove (1902) The Golden Bowl (1904) The Eagle's Shadow (1904) Roads of Destiny (1909) Dome of Many-Colored Glass (1912) Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) Painted Veils (1920) This Side of Paradise (1920) BlackArmour (1923) Roan Stallion (1925) Silver Stallion (1926) Look Homeward, Angel (1929) Green Laureis (1936) ThePilgrimHawk (1940) Masque of Mercy (1947) Guard of H onor (1948) Thrones (1959)

If we compare these emblazoned titles, deriving from religious or medieval heraldry, if not from ancient Greece, to the following titles, the contrast becomes dear: Leaves of Grass (1855) Bricks without Straw (1880) Five Little Peppers (1881) Old Swimmin'-Hole (1883) The OldHomestead (1886) Main-Travelled Roads (1891) The Pit (1903) Cabbages and Kings (1904) TheJungle, (1906) The Scarecrow (1908) The Harbor (1915) Cornhuskers (1918) Smoke and Steel (1920) A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) Triumph of the Egg (1921) Covered Wagon (1922) Black Oxen (1923) Adding Machine (1923) All God's Chillun (1924) Enough Rope (1926) Street Scene (1929) Tobacco Road (1932)

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Man with aBull-Tongue Plow (1934) The Cradle will Rock (1937) Of Mice and Men (1937) The Naked and the Dead (1948) etc.

Again, compare Black Oxen to Black Armour, both appeared in 1923, both belong to the same syntactic and even semantic (color) paradigm, but pragmatically they are as farapart as knighthood and fieldwork are. Cabbages and Kings (1904) summarizes the underlying conflict rather neatly. The shift from name paradigm to symbol paradigm reflects increasing reification and brings titles and mottoes doser together; mottoes stern directly from the heraldic and emblematic traditions these titles draw on (Segermann 1977, 14-23). Mottoes in nineteenth century literature and in twentieth-century criticism rank authors and by implication their texts -like a device for gentry and nobility. Notice that many of the ennobling symbolic titles are intertextual, drawing on the Bible, Shakespeare, Shelley etc. Intertextuality in titles and mottoes may pragmatically serve to legitimize, ennoble, and dissemble products from a market economy, promising a use value the texts they introduce often do not have. If texts open to their social conditions through titles and mottoes and dosely reproduce or challenge the dominating cultural codes, reproduce or innovate the very reproductive mechanisms themselves, then literary titles and mottoes do not only reflect the social fantasies of their readers (Rothe 1986, 115f., 124). They reproduce and standardize them in paradigms that help to stabilize the ruling ideologies about the individual creator or hero in society. They reproduce or challenge the literary canon, genre hierarchies and social ranking etc. If the relatively simple model of paradigm formation and code building sketched here holds, we will have to try them out in more complex syntactic, semantic, sigmatic or pragmatic structures like plots, narrative stances, configurations, symbolic networks, or dialogue construction. Titles and mottoes may just be miniatures, but also a beginning for a more pragmatic study of intertextuality, induding questions of ranking, authority, ideological reproductionand hierarchical overcoding. '

Bibliography Bergengruen, Werner 1960 Titulus. Das ist: Miszellen, Kollektaneen und Fragmentarische, mit gelegentlichen Irrtümern durchsetzte Gedanken zur Naturgeschichte des deutschen Buchtitels; oder, Unbetitelter Lebensroman eines Bibliotheksbeamten. München: Nymphenburger. Berger, D. A. . '''Damn the Mottoe': Scott and the Epigraph." Anglia 100, 373-396. 1982 Böhm, Rudolf 1975 Das Motto in der englischen Literatur des 19.Jahrhunderts. München: Fink.

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Bourdieu, Pierre/Luc Boltanski 1981 "Titel und Stelle. Zum Verhältnis von Bildung und Beschäftigung." In Titel und Stelle. Über die Reproduktion sozialer Macht. Tr. H. Köhler et al. Frankfurt: Athenäum, 89-116. Eco, Umberto 1976 A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, Ind.lLondon: Indiana University Press. Genette, Gerard 1988 "Structure and Functions of the Tide in Literature. " Criticallnquiry 14,692-720. Grivel, Charles 1973 Production de l'interet romanesque. Un etat du texte (1870-1880). Un essai de constitution de sa theorie. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Hewlett, Richard G.lFrancis Duncan 1969 A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Vol. 2: Atomic Shield, 194711952. University Park/London: Pennsylvania State University Press. Hoek,LeoH. 1981 La marque du titre. Dispositifs semiotiques d'une pratique textuelle. Approaches to Semiotics, 60. La Haye/Paris/New York: Mouton. Karrer, Wolfgang 1977 Parodie, Travestie, Pastiche. München: Fink. 1985 "Intertextualität als Elementen- und Struktur-Reproduktion." In U. Broich/M. Pfister, eds. Intertextualität: Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 98-116. Kuhnen, Johannes "Die Gedicht-Überschrift. Versuch einer Gliederung nach Arten und Leistungen." 1953 Diss. Frankfurt. Meyer, Reinhart 1987 Novelle und Journal. Vol.1: Titel und Normen. Untersuchungen zur Terminologie der Journalprosa, zu ihren Tendenzen, Verhältnissen und Bedingungen. Stuttgart: Steiner. Plett, Heinrich F. 1985 "Sprachliche Konstituenten einer intertextuellen Poetik." In U. Broich/M. Pfister, eds. Intertextualität: Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 78-98. Rothe, Arnold 1970 Der Doppeltitel. Zu Form und Geschichte einer literarischen Konvention. Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, Klasse 1969, 10. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. 1986 Der literarische Titel: Funktionen, Formen, Geschichte. Abendland, NS, 16. Frankfurt: Klostermann. Segermann, Krista 1977 Das Motto in der Lyrik. Funktion und Form der "epigraphe" vor Gedichten der französischen Romantik sowie der nachromantischen Zeit. München: Fink. Sondheim, Moritz 1927 Das Titelblatt. Mainz: Gutenberg Gesellschaft. Volkmann, Herbert 1967 "Der deutsche Romantitel (1470-1770). Eine buch- und literaturgeschichdiche Untersuchung." Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 8,1145-1323. Wieckenberg, Ernst-Peter 1969 Zur Geschichte der Kapitelüberschrift im deutschen Roman vom 15.jahrhundert bis zum Ausgang des Barock. Palaestra, 253. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wilke, Hans-Jürgen 1955 "Die Gedichtüberschrift. Versuch einer historisch-systematischen Entwicklung." Diss. Frankfurt.

UD0J. HEBEL

Towards a Descriptive Poetics of Allusion

Critical enthusiasm for the newly created, though not entirely novel, concept of intertextuality has resuscitated scholarly interest in the time-ho no red concept of allusion. 1 While Genette treats allusion as only one manifestation of intertextuality within his elaborate classification of transtextuality (Genette 1982, 8), Schmid asserts allusion as the cardinal manifestation of intersemanticity (Schmid 1983, 145-146). Definitions of allusion as a device for the "formation of intertextual patterns" (Ben-Porat 1976, 108), "a device for linking texts" (Ben-Porat 1979, 588), a "link between texts" (Perri 1978,289), or a "trope of relatedness" (Perri 1984, 128) bear ample witness to the multifaceted attempts of theoreticians of allusion to employ the terminological, and conceptual, advantages of intertextual theory. The fusion of traditional allusional research with recent intertextual approaches has prompted a more far-reaching appreciation of allusion; and the latter may now serve as the over-arching category for an interpretation of verifiable relationships between texts, or, in poststructuralist terms, between a text and the intertextual deja of the texte general. The following paper outlines major developments in allusional theory and presents a working definition of allusion as evocative manifestation of intertextual relationships. It introduces a sequence of categories designed to describe overt allusions as functional parts of narrative texts. The approach submitted is to advance the theoretical understanding of allusions and to contribute to the formalization and systematization of their interpretation.

1. Allusion as I ntertextual Device 1.1. AllusionRedefined

In his A Map 0/ Misreading, Harold Bloom sketches the history of allusion on the basis of the respective entries in the Oxford English Dictionary and, eventually, arrives at the distinction between a "fourth meaning, which is still the correct modern one [... ] and involves any implied, indirect or hidden reference,"

As the paper will limit its references to tides direcdy bearing on the argumentation, the following three bibliographies may provide further sources : Perri 1979; Bruce 1983; Hebel 1989 a.

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and a "fifth meaning, still incorrect but bound to establish itself [that] now equates allusion with direct, overt reference" (Bloom 1975, 126). Bloom's conclusive dichotomy draws attention to a significant point of controversy among scholars of allusion as it foregrounds the definitional opposition 'covert' vs. 'overt.' Traditional notions that tend to emphasize the very indirectness, covertness, tacitness, or implicitness of allusions have mainly been perpetuated in handbooks to literature, above all in Preminger's Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Preminger et al. 1974, 18; cf. Schweikle/Schweikle 1984, 15; Holman 1980, 12; Wilpert 1979,30; Cuddon 1977, 30-31). This conception of allusion has inspired an almost infinite number of encyclopedic endeavors, which trace and document hidden references, without, however, always paying due attention to the interpretive potential of the intertextual links retrieved. N evertheless, philological zeal, sometimes even a kind of detective passion, has laid invaluable groundwork for ensuing interpretations of some of the most allusive works of world literature (cf. e. g., Rathjen 1988; Weisenburger 1988; Coffler 1985; Clark 1931/1974; N athan 1969; Thornton 1968; J ensch 1925; Burgess 1903/1968). Recent studies on allusion, among which those by Ben-Porat (1973, 1976, 1979), Perri (1978,1984), Johnson (1976), Coombs (1984), Rodi (1975), and, though in a different mann er , Conte (1974/1986) and Schaar (1975, 1978, 1982) deserve special mention, have paved the way for a more encompassing understanding of allusion. Thus, Ziva Ben-Porat, defining (literary) allusion as "the simultaneous activation of two texts," differentiates between allusion as a device for "the formation of intertextual patterns" on the one hand, and allusion as a "directional signal" (or "marker"~ on the other, and asserts that the "marker is always identifiable as an element or pattern belonging to another independent text, [ ... ] even when the pattern is a comprehensive one, such as the tide of a work or the name of a protagonist" (Ben-Porat 1976, 107-108). Ben-Porat's inclusion of tides, names, and, later in the essay, "exact" quotations (Ben-Porat 1976, 110), modifies traditional views of allusion as it recognizes overt references as allusional markers. Even more frankly, Carmela Perri urges the "disregard for the usual criterion of covertness" (Perri 1978, 299): "Allusion-markers may be overt, indeed, may occur as the extreme case of overtness, proper names" (Perri 1978,298, cf. 289 and 304). Allusional studies no Ion ger focus on an allusion's implicitness or explicitness, but direct attention to its relational quality. The allusion's potential to guide the reader to an additional referent outside the alluding text and the allusion's potential to build up semantically significant links between the alluding text and the alluded-to text have moved into the limelight of critical interest. Notwithstanding Preminger's 1986 rehash of the traditional definition (Preminger et al. 1986, 10) and Bloom's contemptuous assault quoted above, this perspective has by now found access to at least two literary handbooks (Abrams 1981, 8; Frye, Baker, Perkins 1985, 15). What seems to be litde more than an inconsequential exercise in definition entails litde less than a restructuring of the terminological and conceptual field

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of intertextuality, allusion, and quotation. Within the larger frame of intertextual theory, as it has been laid out by Kristeva and her disciples, allusion becomes the over-arching category under wh ich quite divers devices for establishing verifiable intertextual relations can be subsumed. Above all, this stratification overcomes the weaknesses of several studies on intertextuallinks as regards the relationship between allusion and quotation. Even Herman Meyer, in his still important work Das Zitat in der Erzählkunst, calls the two categories "irgendwie verschwistert" (Meyer 1967, 15), but does not explain the specific nature of this congeniality any further. While Oppenheimer (1961, 1), Wheeler (1979,3), and Bettina Plett (1986, 10) have argued in favor of allusion as the generic term, Tetzeli von Rosador (1973, 2), Neumann (1980, 302), and Stierle (1984, 148) have underscored quotation as the comprehensive concept. Genette treats allusion and quotation as equally leveled subcategories of intertextuality (Genette 1982, 8). The above redefinition of allusion, together with the establishing of the latter as a directional signal that refers the reader to another text outside the alluding text, allows for the incorporation of quotations into the larger category of allusion. Quotations, whether cryptic or marked, are nothing more, and nothing less, than specific fillings of the syntagmatic space of the allusive signal. It may even be contended that quotations, especially marked quotations, are particularly 'directional' because, in addition to literalness (cf. Simon 1984, 1052; Morawski 1970, 691), referentiality has repeatedly been stressed as an important feature of quotations (cf. esp. Meyer 1967, 15; Neumann, 1980,297; Voss, 1985, 9; Plett 1988).

1.2. Allusions as Evocative Fragments of the Intertextual Deji The changing focus of allusional theory, i. e., the disregard for the criterion of covertness and the interest in allusion as an intertextually relational device, emphasizes the evocative potential of allusions and the description of the dynamic process of their actualization. While Perri oudines this process almost laconicallyas "recognizing, remembering, realizing, connecting" (Perri 1978, 301), Coombs distinguishes between the steps of "allusive reference" and "allusive implication" (Coombs 1984,477), and Schmid sketches as many as seven phases with regard to 'diegetic allusions' (Schmid 1983, 152). Once again, however, it is Ben-Porat who provides the most effective, and interpretively significant, model: The more complex process of actualizing a literary allusion can be described as a movement starting with the recognition of the marker and ending with intertextual patterning. The reader has to perceive the existence of a marker before any further activity can take place. This perception entails a recollection of the original form of the marker, and in most cases leads to the identification of the text in which it has originally appeared. The recollection of the marker's original form may suffice for a modified and fuller interpretation of the sign as it appears in the alluding text. Identification of the marker's larger "referent," the evoked text, is mandatory for intertextual patterning beyond the modified interpretation of the marker itself. The process can be roughly summarized in four stages. (Ben-Po rat 1976, 109-110)

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The four stages, then, read as folIows: recognition of a marker, identification of the evoked text, modification of the initial interpretation of the signal, activation of the evoked text as a whole in an attempt to form a maximum of intertextual patterns. Besides the formalization of theprocess of actualizing allusions, the additional systems of signification drawn into the alluding text playamajor role in re cent approaches to allusion. Coombs's interest in allusive implications, Schmid's concern with intertextual equivalences and oppositions, Ben-Porat's emphasis on the intertextual referent and the formation of intertextual patterns, and Perri's stress on "additional inter- and intra-textual patterns of associated attributes" (Perri 1978, 293), all suggest that a successful allusion does not simply direct the reader to another text on a purely referentiallevel. More specifically, a successful allusion enriches the alluding text semantically by going beyond the level of me re denotation; the latter is, however, instrumental in establishing the intertextual relation as it dovetails text and pretext. A successful allusion always evokes theoretically unlimited and unpredictable (cf. Ben-Porat 1976, 127) associations and connotations. Thus, a text's allusions disrupt its syntagmatic flow and expose the reader to the realm of predominantly, if not purely, associative "vertical context systems" (Schaar 1975, 1978, 1982). Each allusion becomes "the apex of an associative paradigm" (Riffaterre 1978, 95).2 Such adynamie view of allusion is figuratively best expressed in Johnson's dichotomy of "denotative nucleus" and "connotative cytoplasm" (Johnson 1976,580). In the wake of poststructuralist textual theory and in accord with major theoreticians of allusion (Perri 1978,295,305; Schmid 1983, 153; Coombs 1984, 477), it seems possible and onl)'i consequent to extend the scope of this concept of allusion beyond the limits of Ben-Porat's approach that restriets itself to literary allusions (Ben-Porat 1976)."In the same way that literary allusions are considered evocative links between texts, allusions to nonliterary points of reference - nonliterary texts, persons of past or contemporary his tory, events of social or political history etc. - may be regarded as evocative links between the text and the intertextual deja. Carmela Perri's correlating allusions and proper names may support this argument: "Allusion-markers act like proper names in that they denote unique individuals (source texts), but they also tacitly specify the property(ies) belonging to the source text's connotation relevant to the allusion's meaning." (Perri 1978, 291) Searle's definition of proper names as "pegs on which to hang descriptions" (Searle 1969, 172) further illustrates the similarity between the working of literary allusions in terms of Ben-Porat and the working of onomastic allusions to persons outside the alluding text. Just as liter2

lt will be interesting to note that Ferdinand de Saus sure contrasted 'syntagmatic' and 'associative': "Le rapport syntagmatique est in praesentia: il repose sur deux ou plusieurs termes egalement presents dans une serie effective. Au contraire le rapport associatif unit des termes in absentia dans une serie mnemonique virtuelle." (Saussure 1969, 171)

r·" .~.,:-

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ary allusions evoke the whole of the alluded-to text and, therewith, further semantic equivalences and oppositions, "topical or historie al allusions to persons or events" (Perri 1978, 305) evoke further attributes and connotations of their referents that mayaiso contribute to the semantic enrichment of the alluding text. Thus, any allusion acts as a "stumbling block" (Riffaterre 1978, 6), drawing the reader's attention to the text's intertextual relationships. From this perspective, the allusive system of a text becomes the verifiable cross section where text and intertext meet, and where the intertextual background of the text becomes tangible for the reader. In terms of intertextual theory, allusions are manifestations of the text' s ideologeme that marks the text' s historical and social coordinates: "L'acceptation d'un texte comme un ideologeme determine la demarche meme d'une semiotique qui, en etudiant le texte comme une intertextualite, le pense ainsi dans (le texte de) la societe et l'histoire." (Kristeva 1969, 114) Therefore, allusive signals are to be studied as fragments of the intertextual deja, as metonymie elements participating in - at least - two systems of signification. In following critics who have stressed the general metonymie quality of allusive and quotational elements (cf. e. g., Höhler 1969,48; Pollak 1974, 62; Klotz 1976,265; Ben-Porat 1976, 108; Schaar 1978, 384; Voigts 1981, 362; Bell 1981 ; Stierle 1984, 148; Pfister 1985, 29), the present approach argues for an understanding of allusions as metonymie fragments of the intertextual deja.

1.3. Dialogie Allusions and the Reader as Text A reh eologist Dynamic conceptions of allusions as metonymie or sylleptic (Riffaterre 1979; Riffaterre 1980) elements in the alluding text involve a modified view of the referent. Traditional studies of allusion are all too often primarily concerned with the identification of the alluded-to referent and do usually not lead to a reinterpretation of the latter. In the context of the Bakhtin-renaissance, intertextual approaches to allusion have emphasized the dialogic nature of the relationships between alluding texts and evoked referents, i. e., the consequence that any allusion involves a commentary about the text, person, or event called up. While Ben-Porat and Perri remain rather truncated in this regard (Ben-Porat 1976, 114-115; Perri 1978,296), Renate Lachmann affirms for quotation what holds equally true for allusion: Der fremde evozierte Text (Referenztext) tritt durch die Signale (Referenzsignale) mit dem aktuellen, fremde Texte evozierenden Text (Phänotext) in eine intertextuelle Beziehung, die nach der Art der Qualifizierung der Referenzsignale selbst in ihrer Funktion für die Sinnkonstitution bestimmt werden kann. [... ] Das Zitat wird in seiner Doppelfunktion: im Verweis 'auf einen Referenztext diesen sowohl in seinen Elementen zu repräsentieren als auch gleichzeitig über ihn eine Aussage zu machen [... ] voll genutzt. [sie] (Lachmann 1980,19; also Lachmann 1984,136)

Nadel specifies this position: "Literary allusions, in other words, are a covert form of literary criticism, in that they force us to reconsider the alluded-to text and request us to alter our understanding of it." (Nadel 1982, 650) Thus, notions

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of allusion as evocative, bilaterally operative signal link up with Genette's concept of metatextuality (Genette 1982, 10) and render Eliot's quasi-intertextual ideas about the simultaneity of all works of literature and the perpetual process of readjusting, if ever so slightly, the relations among them surprisingly up-todale (Eliot 1917/1932). These dynamic conceptions of allusion require the active participation of the reader in the actualization process in order to exhaust the allusion' s evocative potential as far as possible. It is therefore small wonder that, e. g., Perri (1978, 301) and Schaar (1982, 23) stress the importance of the reader for their approach to allusion. Interestingly enough, it was Julia Kristeva herself, though in different terms and in a different context, who took note of the role of the reader: "Pour le sujet connaissant, l'intertextualite est une notion qui sera l'indice de la fac;on dont un texte lit l'histoire et s'insere en elle." (Kristeva 1968, 311) The establishment of intertextuallinks and the actualization of the evocative potential of allusions depends on the reader's "Resonanzbereitschaft" (Rodi 1975, 129) and his/her "Allusionskompetenz" (Schmid 1983, 154) because allusions, defined by Rodi as "kulturelle Kommunikationseinheiten" (Rodi 1975), always presuppose a certain foreknowledge on the side of the reader. If this allusive competence is not available, if the reader cannot "recreate the textual universe" (Schaar 1982,23), he/she must compensate for this deficit. To the best of his/her abilities, he/she must work towards becoming an "informed reader" who makes his/her "mind the repository of the (potential) responses a given text might call out" and who "suppress[es], in so far as that is possible, [... ] what is personal and idiosyncratic" in his/her response (Fish 1970, 145). The reader's archeological endeavors (cf. Schaar 1978, 382 ;.Stempel1983, 87) to appreciate the allusion's evocative potential with the help of as many extratextual sources as accessible to hirn/her prevents the confusion of one interpreter's allusive competence with the allusion's potential, and bases the interpretation of allusions on more verifiable grounds. The interpretation of allusions should no Ion ger content itself with more or less atomistically tracing (hidden) allusions or with listing allusions denotatively; it should proceed to the fuller appreciation of their evocative potential, elusive as the latter may be. The archeological activity of actualizing allusions leads to the verbalization and documentation of the potential associations they might trigger. 3 The resulting compendium that will be especially important for historically or culturally removed texts serves to bridge presuppositional gaps and to stop intertextual erosion (Riffaterre 1978, 136), not to limit a text' s semantic openness or to curb the theoretically unlimited and uncontrollable range of associations. The ensuing interpretation can, of course, no longer be considered a spontaneous act of reading, but turns into the deli berate attempt of 3

I have demonstrated this kind of archeological work in my study on Fitzgerald's This Side 0/ Paradise; Hebel 1989 b. This work also includes the schema of the intertextual paradigm for the documentation of evocative potential as weIl as an extensive apparatus of reference works.

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an 'informed' critic - the text archeologist - to res tore the text's associative verticality that purely syntagmatic readings are inclined to disregard.

1.4. Verifying Intertextual Allusions The archeological work of documenting allusions and verbalizing their evocative potential goes hand-in-hand with, and actually presupposes, the verification of those textual elements as intertextually related signals that strike the interpreter as possible allusions when reading the text syntagmatically. This initial, still h~pothetical, assumption will be stirred by the interpreter's allusive competence In most cases of unmarked allusions, and by special features of the alluding text, such as quotation marks, italicization, capitalization, or even a character's comment, in most cases of titles or marked quotations. After the interpreter's initial assumption has been checked against the archeological apparatus, the signal is either established as a truly intertextual allusion evoking a referent traceable in the extrafictional dejd or, as will be the case with playfully marked signals, recognized as a pseudointertextual allusion without a traceable extrafictional referent. In instances of suspected implicit allusions, a third variant may concern the falsification of the reader's initial assumption. The verification of a textual element as intertextually related allusion is the prerequisite for actualizing an evocative potential that is independent from the interpreter's individual disposition. Allusions verified as metonymic elements of the extrafictional dejd cO~'mect the text's potential and the informed interpreter's "repertoire" (cf. Iser 1984, esp. 114-116). If, however, a textual element hypothetically assumed to be an intertextually allusive signal on account of any of the features mentioned above cannot be verified extrafictionally and, conse~uently, is classified as a pseudointertextual allusion, the following interpretatIOn has to cope with a primarily arbitrary level of meaning. Associations sparked by pseudointertextual allusions remain predominantly personal and playful and are only checked by their cotextual embedding, with the latter, however, participating in the same system of signification. Pseudointertextual allusions neither tack the signals toward definite points of reference in the extrafictional dejd, nor do they establish verifiable links between the text's potential and the informed interpreter's repertoire. Pseudointertextual allusions to "The Secret Goldfish" in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (Salinger 1951/1964,1), to "'Mad Trist' by Sir Launcelot Canning" in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" (Poe 1839/1978,413), or to "The Courier's Tragedy" in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon 1966, 63) may serve as representative examples of signals that, though in different ways and to different degrees, seem to evoke intertextual points of reference, but only direct the reader back onto themselves and back i~to the deluding text. Although the signals mentioned above are able to call up hterary conventions, neither a verifiable referent nor any definite attribute guides the text' s play with the reader. Although pseudointertextual allusions can be traced back as far as Cervantes and have always been employed as particularly

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ingenious devices, pseudointertextuality has once again become prominent in postmodern literature.

2. Describing Allusions 2.1. Syntagmatic Manifestations of Allusions

The verification - or falsification - of a signal as (pseudo )intertextual allusion and the actualization of its evocative potential is to be followed by the description of the allusion with regard to its form and function within the alluding text as weIl as with regard to its original status as an element of the extrafictional deja. Referring to Frye's dichotomy, Rudat states: I will call the first step, i. e., the "playing to" the allusive context, the centrifugal vector of the allusion, and the second step, i. e., the "pulling in" of meaning into the alluding context, the centripetal vector of the allusion. (Rudat 1985,2)

Whereas the actualization of evocative potential correlates to Rudat's first step, the description and interpretation of allusions resembles his second step. The approach presented hereafter does not, however, content itself with the "pulling in" of meaning, i. e., with the semantic enrichment of allusively organized texts; moreover, it aims at the systematic description of allusions with regard to their working within the alluding text. The categories introduced have been designed in the context of repeated demands for such a descriptive poetics (Lachmann 1983, 67; Plett 1985, 80). In its scope, the description mainly concentrates on explicit (marked) allusions in narrative texts; but for a few exceptions, examples are therefore mostly taken froql novels. The openness of the descriptive system nevertheless ensures its modified transfer to the interpretation of implicit allusions as well as to the interpretätion of allusions in non-narrative texts. In its first step, the descriptive appreciation of an allusion has to account for the manifestation of the intertextuallink within the syntagmatic flow of the text. Besides the basic distinction between implicit (unmarked) and explicit (marked) allusions, with typographie conventions such as quotation marks, italicization, capitalization, and spacing being the most important means of indicating an intertextual relationship on the text's surface, the distinction between quotational allusions, titular allusions, and onomastic allusions may serve to further classify allusive signals. The distinction 'marked' vs. 'unmarked' is of only minor significance for onomastic allusions because, owing to their particularly referential nature, proper names are able to direct the reader to referents all by themselves. Thus, proper names that do not refer to characters of the fictional world are readily affirmed as allusive signals. When, in The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway yearns for "the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and M~cenas knew" (Fitzgerald 1925/1953, 4), the reader is confronted with three names that cannot be related to any of the novel's characters. As onomastic allusions whose extrafictional referents can easily be verified they are able to

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