Intertextuality in contemporary fantastic fiction

Abstract

The article focuses on the elements of intertextuality in contemporary English literature at the theoretical level and then through literary analysis, and it also clarifies the notion of intertextuality in terms of the process of “Changes and Transformations” at two different levels. At the beginning, there is a description of the characteristics of the concept of intertextuality according to selected sources (F. de Saussure, J. Kristeva, M. Bakhtin, G. Genette, W. Benjamin, F. Jameson, G. Allen). Then the focus is on the examination of one particular intertextual work of a contemporary fantastic literature author, Theodora Goss, who based her work on the tradition of English Gothic and Victorian novels. Such novels exploit works of English classics in literary allusions (M. Shelley, A. C. Doyle, B. Stoker, H. G. Wells, R. L. Stevenson, O. Wilde) and motifs from works of American literature (N. Hawthorne). Eventually, there is an evaluation of the analysed novel, mentioning also the significance of classical literary works in the context of contemporary English prose.