Intertext

James Joyce’s Ulysses is a prime example of intertext. Although intertextual elements can occur within a linear text, they work to take the reader out of the text, either physically, as he or she consults another work, or links outside of a hypertext, or in her or his mind, as they contemplate the additional frame of reference and how it relates to the current narrative. Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 is another fundamental work of intertext, for some readers, like myself, requiring an additional text to understanding the multitude of references. Electronic texts often succeed in intertexuality by remediating works into the new medium. Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, for instance, takes the stories of both Frankenstein and The Patchwork Girl of Oz, working them into her own unique narrative, complete with metafiction referencing the acts of reading and writing as well, about the relationship of the narrator with the female monster she has created out of pieces of others, whose narratives are also included along with the body parts they have contributed. Robert Coover, Angela Carter, and Jeanette Winterson also often use this type of intertext in print, reworking classic stories or historical figures to add to context or bring about certain expectations or prior knowledge in the reader.