Intertextuality in Young Adult Literature: A Study of Girl Online by Zoe Sugg

Abstract

This article explores how intertextuality works in Young Adult literature, a key cultural trend of the 21st century. It focuses on Zoe Sugg’s novel Girl Online, a popular and representative example of this genre among young readers. The authors of the research aim to examine the features of intertextuality in this novel: they identify and describe the references to other texts and interpret the novel in relation to the cultural heritage of the past and the present. Using intertextual and contextual methods of analysis, they conclude that the novel’s potential reader is expected to “recognize” certain texts that are symbolic, “cult” or appealing to young people, and that are used as effective tools for creating a story that follows the parameters of mass culture. This also leads to a hypothesis that some types of texts, related to specific traditions and sources, are more dominant than others in the novel’s intertextuality. The study reveals that the novel Girl Online draws on, firstly, the literature of the past (well-known works of English classics that have a “cult” status); secondly, fairy tales; thirdly, products of contemporary, mostly youth, culture (other Young Adult texts, movies, cartoons, etc.); and finally, established narrative techniques that belong to various genres and are not bound by a specific time or place and that are updated by the author. These intertextual links make the novel successful.