Definitions for "INTERTEXTUALITY"
is the ways texts make reference to other texts. These references may be explicit such as an allusion implied by the many different ways a composer can draw our attention to other texts (such as parallel situations, sameness of genre, satire, parody etc.) inferred from your own reading. This refers to the way that you draw on your own experience of texts. These references need not have occurred to the composer and can in fact be drawn from texts composed at a later period. For example, our reading of the original Emma by Jane Austen is affected by the fact that we have seen the film Clueless.
The explicit or implicit echo of one text in another text. This may take the form of explicit cross-references, or implicit, latent themes.
the multiple ways in which a text is entangled with or contains references to other texts, such as London's references to the Bible, Milton, or Burns, all sources with which his contemporary readers would be familiar.
Jones, Glyn:Professor emeritus and translator of HC Andersen. Here his interview and what he has to say about Andersen.