Fundamental ideas on intertextuality as viewed by different researches and their connecting with translation as a process

The research paper is connected with the notion of allusions, which belong to the sphere of intertextuality. It is essential to explore this area to have the clear vision of the researched notions.

Intertextuality is one of the main notions in current literary criticism. The term denotes common characteristics of texts, which is manifested in the existence of ties between them [20; 146].

In this definition it is essential to follow the approach by J. Kristeva, the theoretician of poststructuralism, who introduced the term of intertextuality. The invention of the concept of intertextuality comes from the researcher J. Kristeva’s work on semiotics and literature when the theoretician tried to introduce to a French-speaking audience the work by M. Bakhtin, who was little-known at that time. [20; 147].

Before structuralism, a literary text was considered as autonomous artistic fact that exists in itself; history, biology and politics were only subsidiary for solving the problem of textuality and further reading practice. It was considered that the text existed separately form its author and culture [11; 171]. For J. Kristeva and R. Barthes, a text is to be understood as a linguistic phenomenon which has its origin not in the intention of the author, but in the multiple discursive contexts of the immediate culture of the text and that author. R. Barthes considers that “a text is made of multiple writing and drawn from many cultures.” [3; 147].

Transferring from the analysis of autonomous text to the text that has connections with other texts, history, culture, one can discuss not literary influence but intertextuality. Intertextuality proves that writing, reading and thinking occur in history that is why all lingual acts could be examined in the ideological and historical context [5; 177].

It is relevant for this research to treat a text as intertextual because its meaning is not contained within itself but exists between texts which are to say a text’s meaning exists in the text relation to the numerous other texts. J. Kristeva and R. Barthes place great emphasis on the between-ness of the text, the fact that meaning exists between texts rather than inside. When we read texts intertextually we immediately go outside of them in our search for meaning, a text’s inside comes from that field of meaning which exists on its outside [20; 147].

R. Barthes asserts that texts viewed intertextually do not have their meaning until they are read. The reader traces and explores the intertextual and so activates the meaning. Intertextuality, in this regard, is a major part of poststructuralism’s assertion that meaning is generated in reading rather than in an original act of writing. R. Barthes states in his essay that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author” [4; 273].

Theorists of intertextuality problematize the status of “authorship”, treating the writer of a text as the orchestrator of what Roland Barthes refers to as the “already – written” rather than as its originator. “A text is... a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations... The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them”.

The French researcher Gerard Genette analysed the text in its textual transcendence as everything that brings it into relation with other texts. He called it transtextuality which included: intertextuality, paratext, metatext, hypertext, architext.

Intertextuality is characterized as the literal presence of one text within another. Citing author text is an explicit intertextual relation. Paratexts are those devices and conventions both within a book and outside it that mediate a book to the reader. In other words, paratext provides the textual interface of a text for which the author takes direct responsibility. The third type is the metatext defined as the transtextual relation that links the commentary to the text it comments upon. These types of text can be comments, classification, journals, tables of contents, bibliographies. Hypertextual relations are relationship of imitation and transformation. Finally, an architextual relation is the one that links each text to the various types of discourse it belongs to [23; 137].

Victor Koptilov suggests the division of intertextuality into open and hidden. For instance, citations from the Bible in the literary works of Christian countries belong to open one, whereas the composition of “Dead souls” of M. Hohol’ has hidden intertextuality, and reverberates with Homer’s “Odissey”. The researcher also states that the fragments of original text that are known to the cultural background of a reader should be translated as the components of literary work. If the fragment is not known to the reader’s culture translator can change them with semantically close fragments (known in the culture) or to translate adding short explanation [14; 53].

Vertical context was developed by O. Akhmanova and J. Giubbenet who have introduced the concept of vertical context. They state that every expression is stated in the context. Horizontal context is the lingual surrounding of a unit of a text, coherent passage determines meaning of its constituents. Vertical context is aggregate of texts reflected in the passage; it is a historical philological context of literary work and its parts. Vertical context should be determined from background information, the social and cultural information of a certain nation. While encoding the vertical context the author should take into account background information of the reader [2; 47].

There are different ways of introducing vertical context to the text. The citations can obtain anonymous character when such phrase as “as they say”, “as the fellow said” are added. Very often the vertical context is introduced without any identification and is so close to author text that it is different to be identified. Sometimes the comments are given to the citation especially for creating ironic image. The vertical context can also be used with the deformation of citations by shortening it and changing a word, or style and register of the expression [8; 12-14].

The main categories of vertical context are quotations and allusions. The quotations is the repetition of a phrase or statement from the book, speech or the like used by way of authority, illustration or basis for further speculation on the matter in hand. It is a direct reproduction of the actual utterance, though used to back up the ideas of a new text. The allusion is an implicit reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, mythological, Biblical fact, or fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing [8; 30].

In the framework of the research of D. Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code” one should admit that the topic chosen by the author, the style and, what is most important, the intention of the novel give way to allusions rather than quotations. Therefore it would be relevant to penetrate into the notion of allusions.

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