Reflections upon Childhood and Adolescence - Intertextual Dialogue in The Cement Garden

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature University of Gdansk course: British literature intertextuality language: English abstract: Within the full spectrum of various literary theories offered by modern criticismthe theory of intertextuality deserves a particular attention. This ambitious conceptproposed by Julia Kristeva in the 1960's shed new light on the understanding andapproach to a literary text. Influenced by Bakhtin's theory of dialogism the Frenchscholar suggested a new model of communication which consists of two axes:horizontal involving communication between subject and addressee and vertical whichis in an interaction between a text and a context. The two axes as she claimed coincidewhich stresses the fact that each word (text) is an intersection of word (texts) where atleast one other word (text) can be read (Kristeva in: Allen: 2000 39). She further drewa conclusion that any text is constructed like a mosaic of quotations; any text is theabsorption and transformation of another (Kristeva in: Allen: 2000 39). Consequentlywe can assume that any literary text does not exist on its own but is rather in variousways linked with other literary texts.Barthes further develops Kristeva's original concept and states that:[...] a text is [...] a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings none of themoriginal blend and clash. Text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerablecenturies of culture [...] (Barthes in Allen: 2000 13).The text exists only in respect to other prior literary texts called intertexts with whichthe new text enters into a discourse. Literary plots genres stylistic devices differentcultural symbols and images methods of narration and many other aspects of a literarywork already existing in the literary tradition become a part of new text. (Allen: 200011) In this way a new literary text is always enriched by its intertexts wh