Intertextuality: raising the issue of originality

Abstract EN

Every text exists within a network of relations with preceding, surrounding, and following texts of the same or different authors.

even at the level of the same text, one cannot escape intertextual relations.

this study aims to shed light on intertextuality in relation to originality issue.

in other words, admitting the unescapable intertextual character of all texts, one might question whether we can still assign originality to a given text in spite of being based on other ones.

to answer this question, we refer to two important notions credited to a post-modernist understanding to reality: pre-existing reality and emerging reality.

accordingly, meaning is defined as a constructed reality that signals both a pre-existing aspect (an intertext) and an emerging one (a new perspective).

it is at the level of an emerging reality that one can look for potential originality at the level of both form and function.