Intertextual Transitions in Contemporary Canadian Literature

Melanie Schrage-Lang, Martina Hörnicke

Intertextual Transitions in Contemporary Canadian Literature: Atwood, MacDonald, van Herk. Edited and introduced by Susanne Bach

ISBN 978-3-86821-457-4, 210 S., kt., € 23,00 (2013)

(Reflections - Literatures in English outside Britain and the USA, Bd. 23)

In this volume, a general introduction to the study of intertextuality is being followed by thorough analyses of well-known postmodern Canadian texts. Each section of this book firstcarefully introduces and explains its theoretical background and then shows in detail the workings of intertextuality in the novels and plays in question.Whatever we say, think, and write has been said, thought and written before (very possibly including this sentence). A text cannot not be influencedby its predecessors: it is, by its very nature, intertextual. Due to a countless number of previous works, texts neither have stable meanings nor a stable location in the literary universe. Instead, their places in the canon are constantly shifting due to new appropriations. Intertextuality thus can be regarded as one of the key forces in the production and reception of literary texts.Ann-Marie MacDonald’s sassy and successful play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) abounds with creative appropriations of older texts. Setting intertextual parameters in feminist and postcolonial contexts, Me-lanie Schrage-Lang’s analysis uncovers the interpretive potential of the two main Shakespearean (and other) intertexts of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s play. Following this, she is able to take the interpretation one step further by show-ing that the play is not a mere repository of intertextual links but finallyworks as an allegory of intertextuality itself.Similarly, in Margaret Atwood’s short novel The Penelopiad and in Aritha van Herk’s The Tent Peg, archetypes and myths that are firmlygrounded in the Western cultural heritage are (tongue-in-cheek) dissembled and put together again. Martina Hörnicke applies gender studies and myth criticism to the novels in question, thereby revealing the diverse and intricate intertextual processes that are at work in (re)creations and (re)inter-pretations. And in so doing, she finallyuncovers what lies behind the web of the texts, their inter-texts and their mythological/ideological backgrounds: a meta-mythology.

Buchvorschau / Inhaltsverzeichnis (pdf)