Spring 2012: Milich (2A)
"Some might call it Pla(y)giarism": Intertextuality in Literature, Film and the Arts
How does Kafka's novel The Trial relate to Orson Welles's film version? How does Oscar Wilde's representation of Salome differ from Strauss's opera, Flaubert's short story, or Ruben's painting of the biblical figure? Those and other examples will help us understand intertextuality as an indispensable concept of comparative literature. Breaking with traditional notions of "origin," "influence," "hermetic texts" or "authorship," intertextuality assumes that meaning and intelligibility in texts are based on a network of concurrent artifacts and discourses. Every work of art is a mosaic of references to other "texts," an intersection of various genres, "a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture" (Roland Barthes). In addition to literary, cinematic, and artistic illustrations, we will read theories of intertextuality by Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Harold Bloom, and Gerard Genette.