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Myth, literature, cinema, arts
Intertextuality
Interdisciplinarity
Ancient myths in contemporary European Literature
Second Lesson
Lecturer: Petros Marazopoulos
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Defining Intertextuality
• Intertextuality, Julia Kristeva, the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin and Saussure’s theory regarding the
systematic features of language
• Julia Kristeva and the theory of Intertextuality in the 1960s
• The concept of intertextuality that Kristeva initiated proposes the text as a dynamic site in which
relational processes and practices are the focus of analysis instead of static structures
(Martinez- Alfaro)
• The presence of other texts in texts, and other words in words
• Theory of intertextuality and the rejection of textual autonomy
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Defining Intertextuality
• Intertextuality suggests that texts cannot exist as self-sufficient wholes
• Links to Bakhtin’s idea, according to which “each word is an intersection of other words”
• The belief that texts do not function as “closed systems”
• That means that texts can not be studied as closed systems
• Literary texts as traces of otherness
• That is because, texts are shaped by repetition and transformation of other textual structures
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Defining Intertextuality
• Responses to intertextuality: large number of literary critics responded to Kristeva’s theory
• Intertextuality and the differentiation regarding literary texts’ meanings
• The theory resulted to a shift of emphasis from the individual text to the way in which texts relate
to one another
• Understanding the texts as a system (or an infinity) of other structures
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The origins of Intertextuality
• Intertextuality and the classic world: the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and Longinus
• The Socratic dialogues and the intertextual relations that are highlighted in Plato’s theoretical
approaches
• The question of imitation and arts: the notion of “mimesis”
• For Plato the poet always copies a previous/ earlier creation (that is, itself already a copy)
• For Aristotle, dramatic creation is a reduction of a mass of texts which are already known to the
poet and to the audience as well
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The origins of Intertextuality
• Cicero and the idea of imitation
• The Middle ages: belief in the ability to expand the meanings of the texts
• Renaissance literature and the “textual past”
• 18th century onwards: the authors’ struggle to originality and the author’s genious
• The notion of influence (influence # intertextuality)
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Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva
• Bakhtin’s belief that the Self is dialogic
• According to Bakhtin, the Self lives in relation to the Other
• The Self as a multiple phenomenon, having three aspects (the center, the non- center and the
relations between those)
• The central notion of “dialogue” (a person is in dialogue with himself, with other human beings,
as well as with the world)
• Bakhtinian theory of language
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Defining Intertextuality
Intertextuality refers to a mosaic of quotations; any text is the
absorption and transformation of another. The notion of
intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic
language is read as at least double”
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Intertextuality- Julia Kristeva in “Word, Dialogue and Novel”
The literary discourse is an intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (a fixed
meaning), as a dialogue among several writings
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The concept of “Interdisciplinarity”
• In literary theory, by using the term interdisciplinarity we are referring to the relationship between
literature and other arts (cinema, music, painting etc)
• Comparative Literature and Comparative Art Studies
• Comparing two –or more– products of Art
• What can we compare?
• How do we compare?
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Why do we compare literature with other arts?
• Arts become a subject for literary texts
• Literature can describe/ mention/ comment on Art
• Literary heroes may be artists (Tomas Man’s Dr. Faustus)
• Literature may contain thoughts on other arts (cinema/ music etc)
• Same motifs/ themes in different aspects of art
• Different forms of art may have parallel narration techniques (modernist novel and cinematic
narration)
• Literary history and comparative approach
• Literary gernes and comparative studies
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A history of comparison
• Is comparison a contemporary research approach?
• Antiquity, the nine muses and the relation between arts
• Roman classification and analogies between arts
• Renaissance and the belief to the unity and relevance of arts
• Common influence on the audience
• The belief that all arts have mimesis or reality as a common base
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Differences between arts
• Expression
• Form
• Ways of Narration
• Gernes
• Romanticism and the idea of exceeding the limits between arts (eg. Novalis/ Hoffman and the
interruption of narration by songs, fairy tales, poems etc)
• The term “Gesamtkunstwerk” by Richard Wagner; opera as a mutual result between literature,
theatre, music, direction, acting etc)
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Comparison in the contemporary era
• From literature to cinema
• Which are the main differences between literary and filmic texts?
• For the early comparative studies, literature was considered to be a superior form of art in
comparison with cinema (the most important criterion for comparison, was, at this point,
accuracy)
• Contemporary terms: transformation, transposition or adaptation
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Differences between literary and filmic texts
• Novel and time linearity
• Cinema, coherence and density
• Time and the power of image
• The parameter of music, sound etc
• Literature, dialogue and language
• Cinema, body language and gestures
• How can literature and cinema capture emotion?
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Combing different means of art
• Opera (combining theatre, discourse, music)
• Comics (combining image and narration)
• Distinguish between interface (the presence of a song in a theatrical play) and co-existence of
two arts (as in opera)
• The usage of different theoretical tools for the analysis of different means of expression
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Ancient myths in the contemporary era
• Myth as thematic in literature
• Myth as thematic in cinema
• Myths, narration and motifs
• Transformations of myths in different arts
• Contemporary societies and ancient stories: how is myth used in narration?
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Petros Marazopoulos
petrosmarazopoulos@gmail.com
February 2025