Literature and the Visual Arts

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Introduction: Literature and the Visual Arts; Questions of Influence and IntertextualityAuthor(s): Margarete LandwehrReviewed work(s):Source: College Literature, Vol. 29, No. 3, Literature and the Visual Arts (Summer, 2002), pp.1-16Published by: College LiteratureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25112655 .

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Introduction:iteraturendheVisualrts;

Questionsf InfluencendIntertextuality

Margarete Landwehr

Areading of the articles in this collection,

which focuson

the cross-fertilizationbetween literary and visual works of art

including paintings, icons, magazine and tele

vision advertising, opera, and film, prompts

reflections on the nature of intertextuality

and the need for a theoretical framework for

a discussion of the essays. This overview of

theories of intertextuality will include the

origins of the concept of intertextuality, the

general response of American scholars to

these theorists, and the debate it sparked

regarding the difference between influence

and intertextuality. It will, as well, consider

practical applications of the theories of both

"camps," and the significant relationship

between intertextuality and postmodernist

texts. A separate section briefly outlines a tax

onomy of intertextuality proposed by Gerard

Genette, which provides categories and use

ful terms for understanding and discussing

some of the myriad intertextual relationships.

Landwehr isAssociateProfessor

ofGerman atWest Chester

University. She has published

articles on Heinrich von Kleist

and worksby in-de-siecle

writers

such as Arthur Schnitzler and

Josef Roth.



2 CollegeLiterature9.3 (Summer002)

The serviceable concepts and vocabulary provided in this section will be

applied, finally, to the essays in this volume in terms of influence and inter

textuality.

Origins:akhtin,risteva,ndBarthes

The term intertextuality, generally understood to connote the structur

al relations between two or more texts, became popular in the late 1960s as

an alternative strategy to studying literary texts that would serve as an anti

dote to historically oriented approaches.The historicist assumes that a schol

ar can uncover an authors intentions, the sources of his/her ideas, and

responses of contemporary readers. Key terms of this approach are "influ

ence" and "inspiration." The concept of influence privilegesan earlier text

(or artist) over a later one for which it acts as a source. Conversely, inspira

tion regards the later text (or artist) as an innovative improvement over the

previousone. As early

as the 1940s, however, Rene Wellek and Austin Warren

questioned the predominance of nineteenth-century influence studies by

pointing out a dilemma in the historical investigation of a text: "There are

simplyno data in literary history which are

completely neutral Tacts'"

(Morgan 1985, l).1 Thus, choice of texts and studies of influence were rid

dled with "value judgments." This shift from historicism with its tracing of

literary originsand sources of

influence,to

intertextuality marked,as

Thai'sMorgan notes, a dramatically different approach

to literary studies:

By shiftingour attention from the triangle of author/work/tradition to that

of text/discourse/culture, intertextuality replacesthe evolutionary model of

literary history with a structural orsynchronic model of literature as a

sign

system. The most salient effect of this strategic changeis to free the

literary

text frompsychological, sociological, and historical determinisms, opening

it up to anapparently

infiniteplay

ofrelationships

with other texts, or

semiosis. (Morgan 1985, 1)

Although Julia Kristeva coined the term intertextuality, Mikhail Bakhtin,

whose ideas she popularized, is regardedas

having initiated the concept. In

Problems ofDostoevsky's Poetics, originally published in 1929, Bakhtin criticizes

historicist literary criticism and its views that the novel consists of ahomog

enousrepresentation of reality, expresses

an author'sopinions,

or reveals his

or her psychology. Instead, he proposes the concept of the "polyphonic"

novel, which includes avariety of idiolects employed by characters aswell as

extra-literarytexts such as

newspaper articles or anecdotes and, consequent

ly, offers amultiplicity of ways of viewing "reality." A polyphonic novel differs from a realist work by its "carnivalistic" stance, which parodically

dethrones dominant ideologiesor institutions. Thus, the polyphonic novel

demonstrates the 'Jolly relativity of every system" (Morgan, 1985, 11; empha



MargareteLandwehr 3

sis in original). As Morgan points out, Bakhtin s notion of the carnivalization

of Uterature constitutes a theory of intertextuality

Julia Kristeva introduces the term "intertextualite" in 1966 while

explaining Bakhtin s notion of dialogism and carnivalization:

Bakhtin was one of the first toreplace the static

hewing of texts with a

model where literarystructure does not

simplyexist but is

generatedin

relation to another structure. What allows adynamic dimension to struc

turalism is his conception of the 'literary word' as an intersectionof

textual sur

facesrather than a

point (a fixed meaning),as a

dialogue among several writ

ings: that of the writer, the addressee (or the character) and the contempo

rary or earlier cultural context. (Kristeva 1986, 35-36; emphasisin

original)

Building upon Bakhtin stheory, Kristeva substitutes the term "text" for

Bakhtin's "word" and points out that the "horizontal" axis of

subject/addressee and the "vertical" axis of text/context bring to light the

important discovery that "each word (text) is an intersection of words (texts)

where at least one other word (text)can be read" (1986, 37). Bakhtin con

sidered "writingas a

reacting of the anterior literary corpus and the text as

anabsorption of and reply to another text" (39). Consequently, this translin

guistic science enables readers to understand intertextual relationships: the

word (or text) occupies "the status of mediator, linking structural models to

cultural(historical)

environment"(37;

heremphasis). Employing

Bakhtin's

intertextual concept of dialogism, Kristeva outlines a newapproach

to poet

ic texts in which notions such asauthorship, causality, and finality

are abol

ished.Thus, she regards any text as constructed from "amosaic of quotations"

and concludes that "the notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjec

tivity" (37; emphasis in original).

In "Death of the Author," written two years later in 1968, Roland

Barthes introduces similar ideas when he states that writing constitutes the

destruction of every voice and of every point of origin. Abolishing the

notion of an author, which heregards

as aproduct

of Renaissance human

ism and capitalism, and of origins, Barthes claims that the text does not con

sist of a line of words "releasinga

single 'theological' meaning (the 'message'

of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of

writings,none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quo

tations drawn from the innumberable centres of culture" (1977, 146). Thus,

both Kristeva and Barthes replace the concept of an author that "fathers" a

text with that of intertextuality,amosaic or an

impersonal blendingor inter

secting of various texts. Both Barthes and Kristeva, then, distinguish inter

textuality from the traditional notion of influence, aprinciple of causality, of

origins, that is associated with aprior methodology, inwhich the meaning of

a text is traced back to the author s intention.




Americanheorists:RevivingnfluencendIntentionality

Whereas Barthes and Kristeva refuse to allow the concepts of "author"

or "sources" to overlap with that of anonymous intertextuality, American

theorists, as Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein note, have questioned the firmboundaries between influence and intertextuality and even perceive these

boundaries asvirtually nonexistent. Susan Stanford Friedman, for example,

points out that Kristeva s use of Bakhtin to define her concept of intertextu

ality itself depicts the principles of influence and, conversely, observes that

"the discourse of intertextuality wasalready implicit in the study of literary

influences as amethodology" (1991, 155). In particular, Friedman notes that

scholars of American intertextual criticism generally ignore the "death of the

author" and discusses the contributions of Jonathan Culler (1981) and

Harold Bloom (1973, 1975) in the debate of intertextualityvs. influence.

Culler claims that the concept of intertextualitycan be situated in a spec

trum ranging from the anonymous, infinite intertexuality of Barthes to the

finite, dyadic intertextuality of Bloom. (Culler has noted that Bloom's defi

nition of influence often resembles that of intertextuality, "Influence, as I

conceive it, means that there are no texts, but only relationships between

texts" [Bloom 1975, 3].) Culler observes that Bloom reintroduces the idea of

"the person," the confrontation of authors with their precursors in an

Oedipal rivalry as opposed to Barthes's anonymous textual codes, and sub

mits a definition of intertextuality that straddles both extremes. Culler situ

ates a text in "a prior body of discourse?other projects and thoughts which

it implicitlyor

explicitly takes up, prolongs, cites, refutes, transforms"

(Friedman 1991, 156).

Similarly, Friedman supports a redefinition of intertextuality that allows

for the concept of agency. She employs the American feminist Nancy K.

Miller's method of "arachnology,"a type of gynocriticism,

as a useful model.

Miller'smethodology

blends Barthes's notion of the text as a "web" with

American feminists' stress on the importance of the author. Miller's arach

nology acknowledgesa text as a

weaving of other cultural and historical

texts, but refuses to accept Barthes's notion of anonymity and advocates "the

author" as a concept central to feminist criticism. In place of "anonymous

textuality" Miller proposes "a political intertextuality" that remains necessar

ilya form of negotiation with the dominant social text" (Friedman 1991,

158-59).

The art historian Michael Baxandall adds another twist to the influence

vs.intertextuality debate and implicitly supports the notion of agency when

he argues that the line of intentionalityruns from the later to the earlier

artist. This viewpoint turns the theory of influence on its head and resembles

traditional theories of inspirationas it portrays the successor not as a

passive



MargareteLandwehr 5

recipientof the

predecessor'sideas or

techniques,but rather an active

agent

whoreshapes

theprecursor's

material:

"Influence" is a curse of art criticismprimarily because of its

wrong-head

ed grammatical prejudice about who is the agent and who the patient: it

seems to reverse the active/passive relation which the historical actor expe

riences and the inferential beholder will wish to take into account. If one

says thatX influenced Y it does seem that one is saying thatX did some

thing toY rather thanY did something toX. But in the consideration of

good pictures and painters the second isalways the more

lively reality.. . .

If we think ofY rather than X as the agent, thevocabulary

ismuch richer

and moreattractively diversified: draw on, resort to avail oneself of, appro

priate from, have recourse to, adapt, misunderstand, refer to, pick up, take

on, engage with, react to, quote,. . .

copy, address, paraphrase, absorb, make

a variation on, revive, continue, remodel, ape, emulate, travesty, parody.. . .

Most of these relations cannot be stated the other way around?in terms of

X acting onY rather thanY acting on X. (Baxandall 1985, 58-59)

Baxandall's concept of intentionality and the means with which an artist

consciously transforms apredecessor's material brings forth the question of

motive, which, in turn, leads one to ask if varying degrees of awarenessmight

contribute to one distinction between influence and intertextuality (Clayton

1991, 30).There are various obstacles, however, in apractical application of

the concept of intentionality. Notions of agency and intentionality, of course,

risk reinstating traditional psychologistic concepts of artistic production at

the cost of understating culturalist explanations. Moreover, the trail to deter

mining intentionalitycan be rife with potential obstacles and pitfalls. While

the influence of previously written works on later ones can be quite obvi

ous, such as in the case of parodyor

pastiche, it is conceivable that authors

may inadvertently appropriate ideas, plots,or motifs from works they read

years earlier. Conversely, an artist candeliberately employ/subvert cultural

texts/codes as, forexample,

whenparodying

a certaingenre

or

writing style.On the other hand, these codes may be so "embedded" in the artist's

Weltanschauung or so enmeshed in his/her idiolect that the writer unwit

tingly employs them. Despite the barriers todiscerning

orverifying

an

author's intention or awareness ofappropriating specific

sources or cultural

texts, the concepts of agency, influence, and intentionalityare serviceable

onesparticularly when the influence of a

previous work or artist is obvious

and/or verifiable and significant in comprehending the subsequentone.

The difficulty in abolishing the concept of agency especially when

attempting to analyzea

literary or artistic work becomes evident when one

peruses the essays of scholars who have attempted to elaborate and system

atize various elements/aspects either of influence or of intertextuality The

concept of an author is explictly present, of course, in the former, but also




implicitly alluded to in the latter. Those who describe texts in terms of inter

textuality and cultural codes employterms that suggest agency and allude to

notions of sources and influence. A brief discussion of two models, each from

onecamp,

will illustrate thispoint.

In "Influence vs. Intertextuality," Ulla Musarra-Schroeder argues for the

rehabilitation of the concept of influence and sketches out three types of

influence. First, an artist or writer may be influenced by philosophical, psy

chological, sociological,or scientific ideas from individual thinkers or their

works. Second, an influence can consist of formal, stylistic, structural, or

compositional principles. The model text could represent a certain genre or

styleor contain

particularstructural devices that the successor

appropriates.

Third, she restricts the concept of influence to include "only those phenom

ena which in some way have directed the process of creation of a text, the

writing process" (1996,170). This process of influence "may manifest itself in

various ways in certain schemes orpatterns of semantic, stylistic, composi

tional, or formal order or sometimes also in concrete inter-textemes such as

quotationsor allusions" (170).

Lauro Zavala (1995) designatesa text as "the weaving of meaningful

elements" and defines intertextuality as "the rules that determine the exis

tence of the net." He outlines elements for intertextual analysis including:

"discursive cartography" such as the sociolect common to text and intertextand "intertextual strategies" such as allusion, ekphrasis, quotation, parody, pla

giarism, and pasticheas well as irony, hyperbole, metaphor, and paradox. If

sociolect suggests cultural orlinguistic codes, then intertextual strategies such

asekphrasis and parody

assume an author, who deliberately borrows from

and transformsprevious texts.Thus, when

actually analyzinga concrete text,

theorists of both camps clearly articulate the need to assume an agency and

sources for that text aswell as cultural and social intertexts.

IntertextualityndPostmodernism

No historical overview of intertextuality would be complete without a

discussion, however brief, of the significant relationship between intertextual

ity and postmodernism. In his valuable survey of theories of intertextuality,

Graham Allen discusses Linda Hutcheon's observation that double-codedness

constitutes a central feature of postmodern literature. This double-codedness

questions available modes of representation in culture while acknowledging

that it still must apply these modes. Hutcheon states that post-modernism is

contradictory since it "works within the very systems it attempts to subvert"

and is, thus, double-coded (Allen 2000, 189). Juxtaposing the nostalgia she

perceives inmodernism's intertextual use of past forms with the irony often

used in postmodern works when utilizing similar forms, she notes:



MargareteLandwehr 7

When Eliot recalled Dante orVirgil in TheWaste Land, one sensed a kind

of wishful call tocontinuity beneath the fragmented echoing. It is precise

ly this that is contested inpostmodern parody where it is often ironic dis

continuity that is revealed at the heart of continuity, difference at the heart

of similarity. . . .Parody is a perfect postmodern form, in some sense, for it

paradoxically both incorporates and challenges that which it parodies. It

also forces a reconsideration of originor

originality that iscompatible with

otherpostmodern interrogations of liberal humanist assumptions.

(Hutcheon 1988,11)

Parody constitutes not merelya

postmodernist form of intertextuality,

but also functions as a self-reflexive strategy that foregrounds the mode of

representation itself. Postmodernist works simultaneously acknowledge their

dependence

on established forms ofrepresentation,

what Barthes calls

"doxa," and disturb or even subvert these forms, "paradoxa" (Allen 2000,

190). This radical questioning of the forms of representation and, conse

quently, modes of knowledge within a culture, through parody foregrounds,

asHutcheon states, "the poUtics of representation" (Allen 2000, 190). Thus,

such parody, which impUesa type of self-reflexivity, "points in two directions

at once, towards the events being represented in the narrative and toward the

act of narration itself (191). Thus postmodern fiction dependson intertextu

al practice, which has an intended destabiUzing effect within such fiction,

because it focuses attention on and manipulates the tension between fact and

fiction, between the constructed and the real (193).

Genette'sTaxonomyf Intertextualitynd nterartselations

Of the major French theorists, only the structuralist Gerard Genette

sketches out a detailed taxonomy of intertextuality in atrilogy of works

(1992,1997a, 1997b).2 As Graham AUen observes, "the essential thrust of the

structuralist projectseems to be toward the intertextual, in that it denies the

existence of unitary objects and emphasizes their systematic and relationalnature, be they literary texts or other artworks" (2000, 96). In this trilogy,

Genette produces a theory of "transtextuality," which AUen explainsas

"intertextuality from the viewpoint of structural poetics" (98). Perceiving lit

erature asessentiaUy "transtextual,"

or asecond-degree

construct created out

of shards of other texts, Genette maps out ways in which relationships

between texts can be systematicaUy interpreted and subdivides transtextuali

ty into five categories.3 Significantly, he rejects the idea that aU types of

"transtextuality" must be implicit, deeply interwoven into a text's fabric.

Genette's first category, "intertextuality" which he defines as "a relation

ship of copresence between two texts or among several texts" and as "the

actual presence of one text within another" is not the same concept




employed by Kristeva (1997a, 1-2). Genette's redefining intertextuality into

three subcategories?quotation, aUusion (the most "impUcit"), and plagia

rism?offers apragmatic and easily identifiable relationship between texts.

"Metatextuality"

such as

Uterary

criticism and

poetics,

indicates that one text

serves ascommentary

on another.

The focus of Palimpsests, "hypertextuaUty," is defined by Genette as"any

relationship unitinga text B (which I shaU caU the 'hypertext')

to an earlier

text A (I shaU, of course, caU it the 'hypotext') upon which it is grafted in a

manner that is not that of commentary" (5). (The Oxford English Dictionary

defines "palimpsest"as "a parchment, etc. which has been written upon

twice, the original writing having been rubbed out.") AUen pointsout that

"palimpsests suggest layers of writing and Genette's use of the term is to indi

cate literature's existence in 'the second degree,' its non-original rewriting of

what has already been written" (2000, 108). Particularly in this category,

Genette is concerned with intended and self-conscious relations between

texts, especiaUy in terms of specific genres, "Imean a category of texts which

whoUy encompass certain canonical (though minor) genres such aspastiche,

parody, travesty, and which also touches upon other genres?probably aU

genres" (AUen 2000, 108). Genette devotes the bulk of his study on ways in

which hypertextual transformations such as self expurgations, excisions,

reductions, or amplifications are created out of particular hypotexts. As

Morgan has observed, Genette's definition of hypertextuaUty resembles the

traditional notions of influence and sources and does not advance the debate

concerning the verification of sources and determination of intentionality

(1985, 31). Despite such flaws, Genette's taxonomy offers useful terms in dis

cussing and analyzing intertextual relationships.

Although Genette's taxonomy of transtextuality deals with literary texts,

it can also be employedto analyze interarts relations. Towards the end of

Palimpsests, he claims that his literary taxonomy can be appliedto the prac

tices of art in the second degreeor

"hyperesthetics." (Although Genette, like

the eighteenth-century German playwright and drama theorist Lessing,

claims that each type of art has its own rules.) As wiU be demonstrated,

Genette's terminology enables one to characterize and systematizesome of

the relationships between the arts.

TheTheoriesfCullerndGenette:Applications

If Genette's terms enable one toclassify

the nature of inter-textual rela

tions, CuUer offers a broader scope: his schema of influence and intertextu

alityas opposite ends of a spectrum clearly provides

onepragmatic and flex



MargareteLandwehr 9

ible framework for discussing these two opposing, but (apparently) not

mutually exclusive views. Influence (and Genette's hyptertextuality) refers to

a finite, dyadic intertextuality and suggests specificsource (s) for a text and

authorial intention. The anonymous, infinite intertextuality of Barthes and

Kristeva, on the other hand, encompasses the cultural, historical, orpolitical

discourses, codes, or texts that an artist may deliberately employor that

implicitly exist within awork.

The two introductory essays on Plath s poems serve asprime examples

of the two extreme ends of Culler's spectrum. In "Sylvia Plath's

Transformations ofModernist Paintings," Sherry Lutz Zivley traces how par

ticular paintingsserve as sources for a dozen of Plath s poems, a clear case of

influence/inspiration. The term intertextuality, however, seems more appro

priate inMarsha Bryant's discussion of Plath s revisions of common concepts

of fifties consumerism and advertising's ideal images of domestic life in

"Plath, Domesticity and the Art of Advertising." The latter illustrates the

intermingling of cultural codes with individual discourse. In particular, Plath

weaves into the fabric of her poems the discourse of American consumer

culture from mainstreamimages

inpopular

women'smagazines

and in tele

vision advertising that depict secular myths regarding the housewife's role.

Bryant states that the rhetoric, images, and mythologies of American adver

tising helpedto

shapePlath s own ambivalent construction of

domesticityand female agency, which go beyond the stance of parody and satire. Her

poems depict domestic woman's complex position in a consumer culture and

both reinforce and question 1950s social codes regarding gender roles and

power in relationships.

Zivleys article also examines the influence of images

on Plath s poetry.

Whereas Bryant discusses how Plath reworks the codes of consumer culture

in advertising, Zivley traces the sources of Plath s poems back to particular

modernistpaintings

and examines the various ways the poet transforms these

art works into poems. At times when a painting would spark a vital insight

into her own life, Plath would conflate memories of apainting with emo

tionally charged personal experiences. (She admitted that art was "her deep

est source of inspiration.") Plath sdescriptive

or indirect references to specif

ic paintings fit neatly into Genette's subcategory of allusion, but, more inter

esting is the inspiration the paintings provoke in Plath in the form of "emo

tional recognition of parallel visual and emotional analogies between art

works and her own social, familial, and emotional experiences." Ekphrastic

poems such as Plath s and John Keats s famous "Ode on a Grecian Urn" are

inspired by imagesor

objects, which usually trigger strong emotions or pro

found insights in the poet. Jean Hagstrum defines ekphrasis succinctlyas

"giving voice and languageto the otherwise mute object" (1958, 18). The




mood or idea that an artwork inspires in the poet (and reader) ismore sig

nificant, of course, than any accuratepoetic description

of theobject.

Jennifer Cushman also explores how images, in this case, Russian icons,

inspired poems in "Beyond Ekphrasis: Logos and Eikon in Rilke's poetry."

Cushman borrows Amy Golahny's definition of ekphrasisas a "text that

expresses thepoet-reader-viewer

reaction to actual orimagined

works of

art"which widens the ekphrasis debate into the speculative realms of writer

intent and reader-response (1996,13).4 In her discussion of the inspiration of

Russian icons on Rilke's works, she links theories of ekphrasis with that of

Orthodox icon theology. If the former deals with the potential for art to

impact life directly, then the latter views "the function of the icon to make

the scriptural word palpable,to occasion a

change in perception, and ulti

mately the behavior of the believer." In particular, the icon serves as a "win

dow between the earthly and celestial worlds" that conveys divine light and

transforms the viewer; its colors in particularwere to convey this spiritual

presence. Similarly, RUke, who considered the poet as apriest/artist, felt it

was the artist's duty to bring the spiritual into corporeal existence. In his

famous "Duineser Elegies" and "Life of Maria" ("Marienleben"), Rilke

invokes the holiness of the angels and the Madonna sometimes throughuse

of color. Cushman concludes that Rilke's poems do not merely describe the

iconsekphrasticaUy; rather,

he constructs thepoem

toreproduce

theexperi

ence of contemplatingan icon by inspiring in the reader contemplation and

revelation. The intertextual relationship between the Russian icons that

inspired Rilke and his poems seems too strong to reduce it to amere "aUu

sion," one of Genette'scategories

ofintertextuality.

If iconic representations of Mary inspired Rilke's poems, then the

Biblical description of the Annunciation scene in which the angel Gabriel

announces to Mary that she wiU become the mother of God inspireda

plethora of paintings, the theme of Susan van Rohr Scaff's essay "The Virgin

Annunciate in Italian Art of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance." One can

frame the changing depictions of the Madonna in terms of shifting codes.

Medieval portrayals ofMary reflect the cult of adoration that surrounded the

Madonna in the Middle Ages inwhich she wasregarded

as a veritable god

dess of popular worship. Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation, on the

other hand, reinterpret Maryas both the chaste virgin of the Bible and as a

descendant of Eve, aparagon of feminine

beauty, even, in some cases, an

object of erotic desire. The variety of reinterpretations of the Annunciation

scene support Kristeva's valuable contribution to the debate on intertextual

ity that "no intertextual citation is ever innocent or direct, but always trans

formed, distorted, displaced, condensed, or edited in some way in order to

suit the speaking subject's value system" (Morgan 1985, 22). In this case, the



MargareteLandwehr 11

transformation of Mary's role in the Annunciation scene from demure vir

gin, to alluring young woman not only reflects the painter's incorporation of

his society's codes concerning her human and spiritual identity, but also his

society's stance towards religion. Her increasingly physical attractiveness in

the laterRenaissance depictions reveals that society's increasingly secular val

ues, its shift in focus from the spiritualto the human.

Similarly, in "Art, Literature and the Harlem Renaissance: The Messages

of God's Trombones'9 Anne Carroll demonstrates how African-Americans'

reinterpretation of Biblical scenes in their poetry and the visual arts marks a

shift away from conventional codes of the dominant culture to anemphasis

on their own culture. In God's Trombones, a collection of poems by James

Weldon Johnson with illustrations by Aaron Douglas, both artists emphasize

the importance of blacks in Biblical history by drawing attention to and

redressing the traditional omission of African-Americans from these narra

tives. Carroll discusses how African-Americans of the Harlem Renaissance

attempted to subvert the artistic conventions of mainstream American soci

ety in their art asdepicted in Johnson's poetic and Douglas's visual represen

tations of black preachers'sermons. Their artistic revisions of established

Biblical myths along with the subversion of traditional aesthetic codes can be

formulated in terms of the conflicting values and discourses of a dominant

majorityand a subordinate

minority.Carroll also examines the interactions

between the visual and the written texts. She analyzes how the illustrations

serve as a visualcounterpoint

to the poems and reinforce certain aspectsof

their message. Douglas's pictures underline meanings only suggested in the

poetry and complement the poems' attempt to challenge established repre

sentations of African-Americans. Because the illustrations serve as commen

tary on the poems, one could argue that they have a "metatextual" (Genette's

term) relationshipto the poetry. Moreover, the juxtaposition of poem and

illustration underscores the various ways in which each medium represents

the sermons. Carroll states that Johnson's poetic innovations demonstrate his

manipulation of formal elements of poetry to reflect aspects of the preach

ers' delivery, while the illustrations suggest movement and vitality by arrest

ing figures inmotion.

The distinctive ways in which each medium reinterprets an idea or a

scene prompt a brief discussion of the debate on the fundamental differences

(and similarities) of literature and the visual arts, a distinction made by

Aristotle and a central concern of any study of interarts relations. Inmodern

times, it was the influential Enlightenment theatre critic and theoristGotthold Ephraim Lessing who established essentialist categories between

poetry and the visual arts in his seminal essay "Laokoon," which refers both

to a famous Hellenistic sculptureaswell as toVirgil's work. Lessing associat




ed temporaUty with literature and spatiality with painting and sculpture.

Moreover, he privileged literature over art when he argued that the artist,

unlike the writer, could only portray asingle moment in time and then from

onlyone

pointof view. As

BryanWolf

points out,conventional associations

of the visual with nonverbal immediacy consign the visual arts to the "myth

ofpresentness," Lessing's spatiality,

whereas the modern world associates rhet

oric, which implies amanipulation of "facts" or words in order to influence,

exclusively with language (1990, 185).Wolf agrees with Tom MitcheU who

states that "there is no essential difference between poetry and painting" and

argues that "painting is no less rhetorical orideological in its structure than

literature" (1986, 184).Wolf cites Emerson's assertion that the sister arts of

painting and literature are united in a common rhetorical structure and that

aU forms of knowledge are sociaUy mediated in order to suggest a tradition

distinct from Lessing's,one that is "concerned not to distinguish painting

from literature but to reunify them under the common banner of represen

tation" (1990,198-99). He states that no act of perceptioncan ever be inno

cent ororiginal, that "the key to the interpretive process does not lie in the

nature of the object interpreted" and that "painting and Uterature alike must

be engagedas rhetorical constructs" (191). His assertion that both a poem

and apainting

are"part of a circuit of meanings, a

signifying system" reflects

the influence of Kristeva and Barthes and incorporates a study of interartrelations into the earlier discussion of intertextualty

The last two essays deal with aparticular type of intertextuality, Genette's

"hypertextuaUty," which refers to any relationship uniting one text to an ear

lier one and which suggests the concepts of influence and sources. In

"Modernity's Revision of the Dancing Daughter: The Salome Narrative of

Wilde and Strauss," Carmen TrammeU Skaggs examines Wilde's appropria

tion of the Bibilical Salome legendasweU asRichard Strauss s transforma

tion ofWilde's text into the Ubretto for his opera. Jeffrey Adams analyzes

Orson WeUes's film adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel in" Orson WeUes's The

Trial: Film Noir and the Kafkaesque." Both articles discuss how social dis

courses?political/social ideologyor cinematic codes?respectively, influ

enced Strauss's and WeUes'sreinterpretation

of anterior texts. anti-Semitism,

orientalist views, and the cult of decadence colored either Wilde's dramatic

or Strauss's musical versions of the Salome figure. WeUes deliberately appro

priates the style and codes of expressionist film and film noir in his cinemat

ic interpretation of the Kafkaesque.

In her discussion ofWilde's and Strauss's texts, Skaggs seeks to demon

strate how each "individual interpreter reacts and responds to the cultural

and artistic ideologies of his own time." The Decadent writer and homosex

ualWUde develops the themes of orientalism and counter-cultural ethics in




his reworking of the Salome and John the Baptist love story of thwarted

desire and perverse revenge in order to present a social critique of gender

ideologies and notions of sexuality. Strauss, who attended aperformance of

Wilde's Salome in Max Reinhardt's "Kleines Theatre" in Berlin, reacts to

nineteenth-centuryGerman culture

by reinterpretingWilde's perverse

sex

ual themes and by caricaturing Jews in an anti-Semitic reinterpretation of

orientalism. Justas the changing values that accompanied the transition from

the Middle Ages to the Renaissance influenced depictions of the Madonna,

so too, the sexual and racial codes of fin-de-siecle England and Wilhelmine

Germany inspired different portrayals of Salome. IfWilde challenges sexual

and gender ideologies, then Strauss depicts in his opera the prevailing racism

of his society.

In his visual reinterpretation of Kafka's expressionist novel The Trial,Welles employs the cinematic idiom of German Expressionist film (which

influenced the film noir style) especially such mise-en-scene techniquesas a

claustrophobic set design, obliquecamera

angles, and a chiaroscuro of light

and shadow.Welles replicates Kafka's violations of the conventions of literary

realism in his novel with his expressionist/film noir style, which subverts

established codes of cinematic realism to achieve adestabilizing effect on the

audience. Justas Rilke attempts to reproduce the spiritual experience of

Russian icons in hispoetry,

so,too,Welles replicates

theKafkaesque

mood of

claustrophobic paranoia, of uncertainty and anxiety, of emotional entrapment

and guilt, and of disorientation through his appropriation of the film noir

style.Welles simaginative portrayal of Kafka's text on the screen illustrates

Baxandall's observation that the successor is not apassive recipient

of apre

decessor's ideas, techniques,or themes, but, rather, is an active agent who

reworks theprecursor's

material toproduce

amasterpiece

in its ownright.

Conclusion

The study of interarts relations has become an acknowledged branch of

Comparative Literature in the United States, and elsewhere with societies,

journals, and conferences devoted to the study of interarts relations

(Weisstein 1993, l).5 Moreover, a new notion of intertextuality ignores the

boundaries between art and non-art (Morgan 1985, 34). Recent studies of

the semiotics of culture have focused on the intertextuality between aesthet

ic and social texts. An intertextual, interdisciplinary study of related domains

of knowledge marks a radical departure from Lessing's division of the arts

into distinct categories and from the sharply defined boundaries among dis

ciplines instituted with the medieval universities and offers a creative

approach to the study of literature and the arts.




Notes

1Morgan Thai's provides

acogent and succinct overview of the development of

the theory and practice ofintertextuaHty.

He focuses onEuropean and some

American theorists

includingBakhtin, Kristeva,

Frye, Bloom,

de Saussure, Levi

Strauss, Derrida, Barthes, Riffaterre, and Genette. His article also contains a thor

oughly researched bibliography. Key ideas of my preliminary discussion of histori

cism vs.intertextuality

and of Bakhtin are culled from his detailedstudy.

Anupdat

ed book-length history of intertextuality isGraham Allen's (2000) which contains

chapterson Sausurre, Bakhtin, Kristeva; Barthes; Genette and Riffaterre; Bloom,

feminism andpostcolonialism;

andpostmodernism. Space limits restrict my discus

sion to a few key scholars.

2I am indebted to AUen's succinct summary of these three voluminous works

(2000).

The first two volumes were

originaUy published

in 1979 and 1982,respec

tively, the original publication date of the thirdwas not available.3 IwiU consider the three that are relevant to a discussion of this issue's essays,

which are aU discussed inPalimpsests.

The other two are"architextuality"

and "para

textuality".The former term refers to a reader's generic, modal, thematic, and figu

rative expectations about texts and his/her reception of awork (AUen 2000,102-03).

Forexample,

the reader may expect that a certain work wiU imitate such generic

models astragedy, comedy, the reaUst novel, or the lyric. "Paratextuality," refers to

those elements that lie on the "threshold" of the text. This threshold consists of a

"peritext" including titles, chapter titles, prefaces, dedications, inscriptions, notes, and

epigraphs,and an

"epitext" that includes elements "outside" of the text such as inter

views, publicity announcements, critical reviews, and editorial discussions (103-07).4 For an exceUent discussion of ekphrasis see Heffernan (1991) and Yacobi

(2000).5

Journals that promote studies of interarts relations include Word andImage

and

Yearbookof Comparative and General Literature.

Works ited

AUen, Graham. 2000.

Intertextuality.

NewYork:

Routledge.Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1973. Problems

of Dostoevsky'sPoetics. Trans. R. W. Rotsel. Ann

Arbor: Ardis.

Barthes, Roland. 1977. "The Death of the Author." InImage, Music, Text, ed. and trans.

Stephen Heath. NewYork: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

BaxandaU, Michael. 1985. Patternsof

Intention: On the HistoricalExplanation of

Pictures.

New Haven:Yale University Press.

Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence.NewYork: Oxford University Press.

-. 1975. A Map ofMisreading. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Clayton, Jay,

and Eric Rothstein. 1991.

"Figures

in the

Corpus:

Theories of Influence

andIntertextuality."

InInfluence

and Intertextuality inLiterary History.

Madison:

TheUniversity ofWisconsin Press.

CuUer, Jonathan. 1981. "Presupposition and Intertextuality" In The Pursuit of Signs:

Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: CorneUUniversity

Press.




Friedman, Susan Stanford. 1991."Weavings: Intertextuality and the (Re)Birth of the

Author." InInfluence

and Intertextualityin

Literary History, ed. Jay Clayton and

Eric Rothstein. Madison: University ofWisconsin Press.

Genette, Gerard. 1992. The Architext: an introduction. Trans. Jane E. Lewin.Berkeley:

University of California Press.

-. 1997a.Palimpsests:Literature

in the Second Decree.Trans. Channa Newman and

Claude Dabinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

-. 1997b. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.Trans. JaneE. Lewin. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Golahny, Amy. 1996. The Eye of thePoet: Studies in theReciprocity of theVisual and

LiteraryArts from theRenaissance to thePresent. Lewisburg: Bucknell University

Press.

Hagstrumjean. 1958. SisterArts: The Tradition ofLiterary Pictorealism andEnglish Poetry

from Dryden toGray. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Heffernan, James A. W. "Ekphrasisand Representation." New

Literary History 22

(1991): 297-316.

Hutcheon, Linda. 1991. "The Politics of Postmodern Parody." In Intertextuality, ed.

Heinrich Plett. New York: Walter de Gruyter.

-. 1989. The Politics of Postmodernism. NewYork:Routledge.

-. 1988. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York:

Routledge.

Kristeva, Julia.1986. "Word, Dialogue and Novel." In The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril

Moi. NewYork: Columbia University Press.

Miller, Nancy K. 1986a. "Arachnologies:The Woman, the Text, and the Critic." In

The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller. New York: Columbia University

Press.

-. 1986b. "Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader." In

Feminist Studies?Critical Studies, ed. Teresa de Laurentis. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

Mitchell, W. J.T. 1986. Iconology: Image,Text, Ideology.Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

Morgan, Thais E. "Is There an Intertext in this Text?: Literary and Interdisciplinary

Approachesto

Intertextuality." American Journal ofSemiotics. 3 (1985):

1-40.

Musarra-Schroeder, Ulla. 1996. "Influence vs.Intertextuality."

In The Searchfor

aNew

Alphabet: Literary Studies in a Changing World, ed.Harald Hendrix, Joost Kloek,

Sophie Levie,Will van Peer. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Weisstein, Ulrich. 1993. "Literature and the (Visual)Arts: Intertextuality andMutual

Illumination." In Intertextuality: German Literature and Visual Art from the

Renaissance to the Twentieth Century. Columbia: Camden House.

Wellek, Rene, and Austin Warren. 1956. Theory ofLiterature. Rev. Ed. NewYork:

Harcourt and Brace.

Wolf, Bryan. "Confessions of a ClosetEkphrastic: Literature, Painting, and Other

Unnatural Relations." YaleJournal ofCriticism 3 (1990): 181-203.

Yacobi, Tamar. "Interart Narrative: (Un)reliability and Ekphrasis." Poetics Today 21

(2000): 712-749.




Zavala, Lauro. 1995. "A Model for Intertextual Analysis."In Semiotics 1995, eds. C.W.

Spinks and John Deely Frankfurt am Main/New York: Peter Lang.

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