intertextuality
Americannoun
Usage
What does intertextuality mean? Intertextuality refers to the way that works of art, especially literature, are related and influence each other. Text, in this context, most often refers to a work of literature, like a book or poem, but it can be any creative work, such as a film, song, painting, or speech. Intertextuality often involves things like the similarities and differences between two pieces, but it can also cover a broad range of relationships between different works. Intertextuality is primarily used in literary and cultural criticism and analysis. Example: In this class, we’ll examine the intertextuality between Hamlet and The Lion King.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of intertextuality
1970–75; < French intertextualité < inter- inter- + textuel textual + -ité -ity
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Kristeva, the mother of intertextuality, has insisted that she never heard that “whimsical pseudonym” before her dossier came to light, and that may be the case.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 5, 2018
But for the most part, this intertextuality is a layering — not of meaning, as you might expect, but of distance from it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2016
The video is a model of pop-culture intertextuality that makes a virtue out of its wide-ranging sampling, and much of its fun came from peeling its thickly layered influences.
From New York Times ● Nov. 20, 2014
"Your dissertation on Joycean intertextuality is sick, bro."
From Slate ● Nov. 20, 2013
Those four films are absolutely uncompromising in their distended structures, their irrealism, their bitterness, their intertextuality, their self-questioning.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 17, 2012
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
