Understand intertextuality correctly

Intertextuality is a rhetorical mode, which belongs to the category of rhetoric. Intertextuality is a way of text construction, which belongs to the category of literature and art. Since language serves as the basis of existence, the world also appears as a text. Everything in the world is textualized. All contexts, whether political, economic, social, psychological, historical or theological, become a mutual text in this sense.

It is a symbolic term in Western post-structuralist criticism, first proposed by French semiotician Kristeva, which means that every text is an absorption and transformation of other texts, and traces of other texts exist in various more or less recognizable forms to varying degrees. In this way, the text is no longer the creative product of the author, but a mesh of various previous fragments of text.

In this article, the author puts forward the importance of rhetoric. “Where there is persuasion, there is rhetoric.” Rhetoric can be used as both an analytical device. It can also be used as a guide for generating persuasive discourse. It can be seen that intertextuality is very important in article writing and life application.

What is the meaning of intertextuality?

The spreading influence of a text on other texts through memorization, repetition, and correction.

Eliot famously advocated a “catalytic” role in “Tradition and the individual talent.”

He believes that the poet spirit is a catalyst, which can transform experience and literature into a new compound. He also said that this catalyst can dissolve the author and the work, promote the pluralistic reaction of intertextuality, and eventually lead to the deindividuation of literary creation.

Therefore, any work of art will be integrated into the system of the past and the present, and will necessarily act on the intertext of the past and the present. On this premise, its meaning must also be evaluated in relation to the whole existing order.