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Chapter 16 - Intertextuality

“An Attempt to Find Pattern and Motive”: Text, Context, Intertext

from Part IV - Literary Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

By
Laura Barrett
Edited by
Jesse Kavadlo
Jesse Kavadlo
Affiliation:
Maryville University of Saint Louis, Missouri
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Summary

Julia Kristeva, who coined the term “intertextuality,” argues that because “any text is the absorption and transformation of another … poetic language is read as at least double.” DeLillo’s entire oeuvre is a lesson in dialogue, as his novels talk to each other, replaying critical themes and motifs; they converse with the culture. While the forms of his novels have spanned a panoply of genres, they focus on similar themes: fear of death, the dangers of consumerism and mass media, the vagaries of language and communication, the attraction of transcendence and the salvation of the ordinary, the tensions between the individual and the crowd, terrorists and artists, words and images, mind and body. A catalogue so extensive requires a conversation with philosophy, science, technology, religion, art, politics, literature, historiography, film, music, and finance, to name a few subjects. The noisy cacophony of intertextuality is both unsettling and productive, offering a permeability in the text that invites readers to participate in the creation of meaning and reminds us that history is constructed and ripe for reconsideration.

Keywords

Don DeLillopostmodernismmodernismartfilmhistory
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Chapter
Information
Don DeLillo In Context , pp. 155 - 164
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Works Cited

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