Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299130347 ISBN 13: 9780299130343

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992

Synopsis

This collection explores and clarifies two of the most contested ideas in literary theory - influence and intertextuality. The study of influence tends to centre on major authors and canonical works, identifying prior documents as ""sources"" or ""contexts"" for a given author. Intertextuality, on the other hand, is a concept unconcerned with authors as individuals; it treats all texts as part of a network of discourse that includes culture, history and social practices as well as other literary works. In thirteen essays drawing on the entire spectrum of English and American literary history, this volume considers the relationship between these two terms across the whole range of their usage. Debates about these two concepts have been crucial to the ""new historicism"" and the resurgence of interest in literary history. The essays in this volume employ a wide array of examples from that history - poetry of the Renaissance and the 20th century, Old English texts, and postmodernist productions that have served as recurrent ""intertexts"" for contemporary theory. The contributors examine such questions as the role of the author, canon formation, gender, causality and the social dimension of texts. They hope to illuminate old assumptions and new ideas about agency that lie behind notions of influence, examining in the process models of an anonymous textual field that lie behind notions of intertextuality.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This important collection explores and clarifies two of the most contested ideas in literary theory today, influence and intertextuality. The study of influence tends to center on major authors and canonical works, identifying prior documents as 'sources' or 'contexts' for a given author. Intertextuality is a concept unconcerned with authors as individuals; it treats all texts as part of a network of discourse that includes culture, history, and social practices as well as other literary works.

About the Author

Jay Clayton is associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University and the author of "Romantic Vision and the Novel." Eric Rothstein is the Edgar W. Lacy Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Madison. His several books include "Restoration Tragedy: Form and the Process of Change" and "Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Poetry. ""

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299130347
• ISBN 13: 9780299130343
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360
• Editor: Clayton Jay, Rothstein Eric