From Influence to Intertexuality in Comparative Literary Studies

Abstract

Critics dealing with intertexuality tend to warn that it is a controversial term like many other terms in literary theory and that different critics give it different senses and apply it in different ways. In this paper I will explain the major trends in defining and employing this term and the role it plays and could play in comparative literary studies as a replacement of the less favored term, influence, that is continuously losing grounds in such studies. Graham Allen in his recently published book, Intertexuality, presents the major controversies surrounding the use of this term and the questions that need to be answered and clarified by critics hoping to employ it as a model for interpretation in literary studies in general. These questions, according to Allen (1981), "all bear upon a fundamental distinction between knowledge, including socio-historical knowledge, and the rejection of the very idea of stable knowledge" on the one hand and upon oer1n1ng rne ifame ot- reterence ot 111tertexual1ty on the other hand. Alien concludes that the task of the critic dealing with this term "is to engage with it as a split, multiple concept, which poses questions and requires one to engage with them rather than forcing one to produce definite ans\vers"(59-60). In other words, the different senses and uses ofthe term, intertexuality, correspond to the different critical approaches to literature and the relation of literature to society or to its context. Some approaches consider that texts are autonomous and arise from other texts .