Explanation
Intertextuality is the relational field in which a text quotes, evokes, transforms, contests, or presupposes other texts as cultural memory. A sentence does not begin from nothing: formulations, genres, and narrative patterns carry prior uses, whether explicitly marked or recognisable only to particular readers. “In the beginning was the path” recalls a familiar biblical formulation while changing it. Meaning arises in the difference between remembered form and new environment. Intertextuality must not, however, turn every similarity into authorial intention; relations may operate culturally, generically, or only through reception. The concept opens an individual text as a node within a mobile memory of other texts and voices.
Movement of thought
1. A text contains a phrase, structure, or generic trace pointing beyond itself. 2. Readers recognise a possible earlier text or cultural repertoire as a reference point. 3. Correspondence and transformation create meaning between the two textual settings. 4. Evidence and alternative sources test quotation, allusion, convention, or reader association. 5. The current text returns as an autonomous node within a network of continuing voices.
Scientific use case
Computational text analysis can identify rare verbal overlap, while philological review assesses chronology, availability, and function. Reception research can test which reference networks different readerships actually activate.
Example
A contemporary travel account opens, “In the beginning was the path.” A familiar sentence pattern is recalled, while one substituted word converts creation into movement and journey.
Counterexample
Two travel narratives do not become intertextual merely because both describe the start of a journey. General thematic resemblance without distinctive form, structure, or plausible transmission is too weak.
Distinction
Distinguish intertextuality from influence, quotation, allusion, and thematic resemblance. Quotation and allusion are specific marked relations; intertextuality also includes generic and discursive traces without assigning all of them to conscious source use.
Effect on thought and perception
Intertextuality makes other texts audible within a text and produces meaning through resumption, displacement, affirmation, or contestation.
Resonance
An earlier formulation enters a new environment; its reverberation changes the present text and is simultaneously retuned by it.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Intertextuality“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-RES6-0007. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-RES6-0007The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Zbinden’s 2003 discussion traces Bakhtin’s French reception and Kristeva’s role, referring to the 1967 contribution and transformation of dialogism. The source author is Karine Zbinden, not Samoyault. Kristeva’s original article was not newly collated. [ZBINDEN-2003]
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Identify the supported textual relation and the transformation produced by its new setting.
Refined short definition
Intertextuality concerns relations through which texts incorporate, transform or depend upon other texts.
Further explanation
Hear another textual voice, then ask whether the new use confirms, redirects or ironises it. Similar wording alone is not proof of an allusion. Comparing the contexts can change the return to the earlier text as well as enrich the new one.
Additional example
Original advertising parody: “To buy or not to buy” echoes a familiar Shakespeare phrase. The recognisable relation explains the joke, not every possible intention behind it.
References for the historical section
- Karine Zbinden: Du dialogisme à l’intertextualité: une relecture de la réception de Bakhtine en France (1967–1980) (2003), Slavica Occitania 17, 207–224 · Einleitung p.207 zur Rezeption Bachtins durch Kristeva.