intertextuality

plural intertextualities

1. countableuncountableThe idea that a given text is a response to what has already been written, be it explicit or implicit.

   When one studies the intertextuality of "Hamlet", one realises that William Shakespeare must have read thousands of books.

   2 more examples

   All of these issues—subjectivity, intertextuality, reference, ideology—underlie the problematized relations between history and fiction in postmodernism.

   1988, Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge, →ISBN

   From the translator's point of view, therefore, both types of intertextuality—or simply all kinds of intertextuality—are important, since the translator, ideally, ought not to deprive the reader of even a smallest chunk of the intertextual load of the original.

   2017, Aleksander Rzyman, The Intertextuality of Terry Pratchett's Discworld as a Major Challenge for the Translator, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 11

2. countableuncountableThe reference to another separate and distinct text within a text.