3rd YEAR ENGLISH LITERATURE OPTIONAL COURSE

INTERTEXTUAL ECHOES
Dr. Lucia Opreanu

Course description and objectives

This optional course will focus on the intertextual relationships established between literary texts
across the centuries as well as between literary texts and works from other fields, especially art and
cinema. After establishing the theoretical framework by resorting to essential texts by Julia Kristeva,
Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Linda Hutcheon, etc. and defining the numerous terms comprised
under the umbrella term of intertextuality, the course will focus on a variety of contemporary texts and
their relationships with the canonical works that inspired them. It will moreover include references to
the interactions established between literary texts and other works of art, especially paintings and
motion pictures, in an attempt to make students aware of the deeply intertextual nature of most forms of
human endeavour. The main aims of the course include encouraging students to respond to new pieces
of writing whilst revisiting already familiar works and determining them to view literary texts not as
isolated entities but as living organisms engaged in constant dialogue with one another.

theoretical framework: Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Linda Hutcheon
terminology: pastiche; parody; plagiarism; appropriation; imitation; adaptation; recuperation;
rewriting; parallelism; collage; bricolage; allusion; quotation; echo.

Suggested topics:
- The current state of literature
- Types of intertextuality in literature, cinema and music.
- Parody versus pastiche: definitions, distinctions, aims (mockery / homage) and examples
- Rewriting fairy-tales and dismantling patriarchy
- Intertextuality across media: literature and cinema (Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, the BBC film
version and Helen Fieldings Bridget Joness Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason)
- Intertextuality across media: literature and art
* from literature to painting (George Gordon Byron Eugne Delacroix; John Keats Arthur Hughes
and Frank Dicksee)
* from painting to literature (Peter Ackroyds Chatterton; Tracy Chevaliers Girl With a Pearl Earring)
-Rewriting narratives from a new perspective
* giving a voice to previously marginalised characters
* rewriting and gender swapping
- Re-rearing and re-writing: the interaction between theory and fiction and the uses of intertextuality as
a critical strategy
- The growing scope of intertextuality the daunting intertextual legacy of some canonical writers
(William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, etc.)

Bibliography
Primary texts:
Ackroyd, Peter Chatterton
Carter, Angela The Bloody Chamber
Chevalier, Tracy Girl With a Pearl Earring
Dahl, Roald Revolting Rhymes
Fielding, Helen Bridget Joness Diary
Fielding, Helen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Fowles, John The Collector
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World.
Lodge, David The British Museum is Falling Down
Nafisi, Azar Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Rhys, Jean Wide Sargasso Sea

Secondary bibliography (optional):

Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Barth, John. The Literature of Exhaustion. The Novel Today: Contemporary Writers on Modern
Fiction. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury. London: Fontana, 1977.
Barth, John. The Literature of Replenishment. Essentials of the theory of fiction. Eds. Michael J.
Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Bauman, Richard. A World of Others Words. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality. Malden,
Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell, 2004.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press,
1973.
Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin
Books, 1992.
Currie, Mark. Postmodern Narrative Theory. London: Macmillan, 1998.
Dentith, Simon. Parody. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Illinois:
University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. Illustrated from classic and modern texts. London: Penguin Books,
1992.
Opreanu, Lucia. Intimations of the Future from the Archives of the Past: The Topos of the Library in
the Postmodern Novel Mapping the Future, Iai: Universitas XXI, 2005, pp. 671-677.
Opreanu, Lucia. Originality, influence, intertextuality in David Lodges Fiction: A Quest for
Solutions to Problems of Literature. Constana: Europolis, 2011. pp. 95-110
Renza, Luis A. Influence Critical Terms for Literary Studies. Eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas
McLaughlin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Rose, Margaret. Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-modern (Literature, Culture, Theory). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Rubin, Louis Decimus. The Curious Death of the Novel: or, What to do About Tired Literary Critics
in The Curious Death of the Novel. Essays in American Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1967.
Schulze-Engler, Frank. Cross-Cultural Criticism and the Limits of Intertextuality. Across the Lines.
Ed. Wolfgang Kloos. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998.
Worton, Michael and Judith Still (eds.). Intertextuality: Theories and Practices. Manchester and New
York: Manchester UP, 1990.

The exhaustion of literary possibilities

MONDAY 3RD MARCH. Spent all yesterday and most of today reading the students work-in-progress,
their major projects for the year, novels (or in two cases collections of short stories) which they started
last semester under Russel Marsdens supervision, or brought up to the University with them, already
under way. I feel rather jaded by the experience. Its not that theyre badly written on the contrary,
the general level of ability is high its just that there are too many of them, too many to take in all at
once. Every time I open another folder theres another imagined world to be inhabited, a whole new set
of characters with names to be memorized and relationships of consanguinity and affinity to be sorted
out, times and seasons to be noted, physical appearances to be pictured, connections of cause and effect
to be inferred ()
Its a very unnatural way to read, of course, jumping from one unfinished story to another, but it
made me think about the prolific production of fiction in our culture. Is it over-production? Are we in
danger of accumulating a fiction-mountain an immense quantity of surplus novels, like the butter
mountains and milk lakes of the EEC? I remember Ralph Messengers dry remark, Whether the world
needs more novelists is a matter of opinion. His own opinion was pretty obvious.
Of course one can argue that theres a basic human need for narrative: its one of the
fundamental tools for making sense of experience has been, back as far as you can go in history. But
does this, I ask myself, necessarily entail the endless multiplication of new stories? Before the rise of
the novel there wasnt the same obligation on the storyteller you could relate the old familiar tales
over and over, the matter of Troy, the matter of Rome, the matter of Britain giving them a new spin
as times and manners changed. But for the last three centuries writers have been required to make up a
new story every time. Not absolutely new, of course its been pointed out often enough that at a
certain level there are only a finite number of plots but the plot must be fleshed out each time with a
new set of characters, and worked out in a new set of circumstances. When you think of the billions of
real people who have lived on this earth, each with their unique personal histories, that we shall never
have time to know, it seems extraordinary, even perverse, that we should bother to invent all these
additional pretend-lives. And it is a bother. So much that in reality is simply given has to be decided
when youre writing fiction. Facts have to be represented by pseudo-facts, laboriously invented and
painstakingly described. The reader must register and memorize these facts in order to follow your
story, but they are flushed away almost as soon as the book is finished, to make room for another story.
Before long nothing remains in the readers memory but a name or two, a few vague impressions of
people, an indistinct recollection of the plot, and a general sense of having been entertained, or not, as
the case may be. Its frightening to think of how many novels I must have read in my lifetime, and how
little I retain of the substance of most of them. Should I really be encouraging these bright young
people to add their quotient to the dust-heap of forgotten pseudo-lives? (David Lodge Thinks)
Well, you see, I have this theory, Adam who had just thought of it, said expansively. Has it ever
occurred to you how novelists are using up experience at a dangerous rate? No, I see it hasnt. Well,
then, consider that before the novel emerged as the dominant literary form, narrative literature dealt
only with the extraordinary or the allegorical with kings and queens, giants and dragons, sublime
virtue and diabolic evil. There was no risk of confusing that sort of thing with life, of course. But as
soon as the novel got going, you might pick up a book at any time and read about an ordinary chap
called Joe Smith doing just the sort of things you did yourself. Now, I know what youre going to say
youre going to say that the novelist still has to invent a lot. But thats just the point: thereve been such
a fantastic number of novels written in the last couple of centuries that theyve just about exhausted the
possibilities of life. So all of us, you see, are really enacting events that have already been written about
in some novel or other. Of course, most people dont realize this they fondly imagine that their little
lives are unique Just as well, too, because when you do tumble to it, the effect is very disturbing.
(David Lodge The British Museum is Falling Down)

Italo Calvino If on a Winters Night a Traveler

It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person
who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less
young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from
journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can
expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in
general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied
it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of
expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or
unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.
So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter's night a traveler had appeared, the new
book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought
the volume. Good for you.
In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for.
Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of
Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow
you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books
That If You Had More Than one life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days
Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books
You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And
You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books
You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them,
Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are
holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning Top Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified,
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure,
very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the
ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always
Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books
Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches
in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books by Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for
you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you),
and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the
not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).

I had decided to read Wuthering Heights the novel we were currently studying in English yet again for the
fun of it, and that's what I was doing when Charlie came home. [] In English, Mike took his accustomed seat
by my side. We had a pop quiz on Wuthering Heights. It was straightforward, very easy. [] Charlie was still
scanning the news, so I picked up my much-abused copy of Wuthering Heights from where Id left it this
morning at breakfast, and tried to lose myself in turn-of-the-century England while I waited for him to start
talking. I was just to the part where Heathcliff returns when Charlie cleared his throat and threw the paper to the
floor. [] I cleared the table quickly while Edward organized an intimidating stack of forms. When I moved
Wuthering Heights to the counter, Edward raised one eyebrow. I knew what he was thinking, but Charlie
interrupted before Edward could comment. []
Im glad Charlie has decided to let you out youre sadly in need of a visit to the bookstore. I cant believe
youre reading Wuthering Heights again. Dont you know it by heart yet? Not all of us have photographic
memories, I said curtly. Photographic memory or not, I dont understand why you like it. The characters are
ghastly people who ruin each others lives. I dont know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with
couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isnt a love story, its a hate story. You
have some serious issues with the classics, I snapped. Perhaps its because Im not impressed by antiquity. He
smiled, evidently satisfied that hed distracted me. Honestly, though, why do you read it over and over? His
eyes were vivid with real interest now, trying again to unravel the convoluted workings of my mind. He
reached across the table to cradle my face in his hand. What is it that appeals to you? His sincere curiosity
disarmed me. Im not sure, I said, scrambling for coherency while his gaze unintentionally scattered my
thoughts. I think its something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep them apart not her selfishness,
or his evil, or even death, in the end. . . His face was thoughtful as he considered my words. After a moment he
smiled a teasing smile. I still think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality. I
think that may be the point, I disagreed. Their love is their only redeeming quality. I hope you have better
sense than that to fall in love with someone so . . . malignant. Its a bit late for me to worry about who I fall
in love with, I pointed out. But even without the warning, I seem to have managed fairly well. He laughed
quietly. Im glad you think so. Well, I hope youre smart enough to stay away from someone so selfish.
Catherine is really the source of all the trouble, not Heathcliff. Ill be on my guard, he promised. []
What were you reading? I muttered, not really awake at all. Wuthering Heights, he said. I frowned sleepily.
I thought you didnt like that book. You left it out, he murmured, his soft voice lulling me toward
unconsciousness. Besides . . . the more time I spend with you, the more human emotions seem comprehensible
to me. Im discovering that I can sympathize with Heathcliff in ways I didnt think possible before. []
As I was about to head down for breakfast, I noticed my battered copy of Wuthering Heights lying open on the
floor where Edward had dropped it in the night, holding his place the way the damaged binding always held
mine. I picked it up curiously, trying to remember what hed said. Something about feeling sympathy for
Heathcliff, of all people. That couldnt be right; I must have dreamed that part. Three words on the open page
caught my eye, and I bent my head to read the paragraph more closely. It was Heathcliff speaking, and I knew
the passage well.
And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I
hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You
may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she
desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drank his blood! But,
till then if you dont believe me, you dont know me till then, I would have died by inches before I
touched a single hair of his head!
The three words that had caught my eye were drank his blood. I shuddered. Yes, surely I must have dreamt
that Edward said anything positive about Heathcliff. And this page was probably not the page hed been reading.
The book could have fallen open to any page.
I was selfish, I was hurtful. I tortured the ones I loved. I was like Cathy, like Wuthering Heights, only my options
were so much better than hers, neither one evil, neither one weak. And here I sat, crying about it, not doing
anything productive to make it right. Just like Cathy.
(Stephenie Meyer The Twilight Saga)

FAMOUS EXAMPLES OF INTERTEXTUALITY IN LITERATURE, CINEMA & MUSIC

Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote
Henry Fielding - Shamela
James Joyce Ulysses
T.S. Eliot The Waste Land
Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
Dead
Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea
Man Friday
Space Balls
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Hot Shots
Scary Movie 1
Scary Movie 2
Scary Movie 3
Scary Movie 4
Austin Powers 1 International Man of Mystery
Austin Powers 2 The Spy Who Shagged Me
Austin Powers 3 Goldmember

Amadis de Gaula
Samuel Richardson Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
Homer The Odyssey
Dante The Inferno, vast range of other texts
William Shakespeare Hamlet
Charlotte Bront Jane Eyre
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
Star Wars Trilogy, Star Trek
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Top Gun
Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer
The Exorcist
The Ring, Signs
The Grudge, The War of the Worlds, Saw, The
Village, Million Dollar Baby
the James Bond series
James Bond (The Spy Who Loved Me)
James Bond (Goldfinger)

THE SIMPSONS (episode titles): Homers Odyssey, Moaning Lisa, Call of the Simpsons, The Telltale Head, The Crepes of
Wrath, Simpson and Delilah, The Raven, Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish, The Way He Was,
Principal Charming, Brush With Greatness, The War of the Simpsons, Three Man and a Comic Book, Saturdays of
Thunder, Lisa the Greek, A Streetcar Named Marge, New Kid on the Block, King Homer, Cape Feare, The Devil and
Homer Simpson, Bart Simpson's Dracula, The Last Temptation of Homer, $pringfield (or, How I learned to stop worrying
and love legalized gambling), The Boy Who Knew Too Much, Lady Bouviers Lover, Bart of Darkness, The Shinning,
Time and Punishment, Two Dozen and One Greyhounds, The Springfield Connection, Lemon of Troy, Radioactive Man,
Nightmare On Evergreen Terrace, A Fish Called Selma, Much Apu About Nothing, Citizen Kang, A Milhouse Divided,
The Springfield Files, Grade School Confidential, The Canine Mutiny, The Old Man and the Lisa, The Principal and the
Pauper, The Last Temptation of Krusty, Trash of the Titans, King of the Hill, Natural Born Kissers, Lard of the Dance, The
Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Doh in the Wind, Mayored to the Mob, Wild Barts Cant Be Broken, The Old Man and the
C Student, Monty Cant Buy Me Love, Guess Whos Coming to Criticize Dinner, Desperately Seeking Xena, Little Big
Mom, Saddlesore Galactica, Missionary: Impossible, Pygmoelian, Bart to the Future, Last Tap Dance in Springfield, A Tale
of Two Springfields, Tennis the Menace, Hex and the City, Wiz Kids, Tales from the Public Domain (The Odyssey, Joan of
Arc, Hamlet), The Island of Dr Hibbert, The Dad Who Knew Too Little, Dude, Wheres My Ranch?, Frinkenstein, The
Regina Monologues, The Fat and the Furriest, Milhouse Doesnt Live Here Anymore, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, The Way
We Werent, Four Beheadings and a Funeral, Sleeping With the Enemy, Theres Something About Marrying, The SevenBeer Snitch, The Italian Job, My Fair Laddie, The Seemingly Never-Ending Story, G.I. Doh, Kill Gil, The Count of Monte
Fatso, The Revenge of the Geeks, Bartman Begins, Stop or My Dog Will Shoot, Mr and Mrs Simpson, Eternal Moonshine
of the Simpson Mind, Smoke on the Daughter, Apocalypse Cow, In the Name of the Grandfather

WEIRD AL YANKOVIC PARODIES: Addicted to Spuds - parody of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love";
Alimony - parody of Billy Idol's "Mony Mony"; Amish Paradise - parody of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise";
Another One Rides the Bus - parody of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust"; Cavity Search - parody of U2's
"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" (Note: The parody is about a horrible visit to the dentist. In the song,
it's "numb me, drill me, floss me, bill me."); A Complicated Song - parody of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated"; Eat
It - parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" ; eBay - parody of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way"; Fat parody of Michael Jackson's "Bad" ; Girls Just Want to Have Lunch - parody of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want
to Have Fun"; Isle Thing - parody of Tone Loc's "Wild Thing" ; Lasagna - parody of "La Bamba" (traditional
Spanish folk song); Like a Surgeon - parody of Madonna's "Like a Virgin"; Livin' in the Fridge - parody of
Aerosmith's "Livin' on the Edge"; Living With a Hernia - parody of James Brown's "Living in America"; Phony
Calls - parody of TLC's "Water Falls"; Pretty Fly for a Rabbi - parody of Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White
Guy)"; She Drives Like Crazy - parody of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy"; Smells Like Nirvana parody of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; Toothless People - parody of Mick Jagger's "Ruthless People";
Yoda - parody of The Kinks' "Lola"; You're Pitiful - parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"

The Princess and the Tin Box

James Thurber
Once upon a time, in a far country, there lived a King whose daughter was the prettiest princess in the world. Her
eyes were like the cornflower, her hair was sweeter than the hyacinth, and her throat made the swan look
dusty. From the time she was a year old, the Princess had been showered with presents. Her nursery looked like
Cartiers window. Her toys were all made of gold or platinum or diamonds or emeralds. She was not permitted
to have wooden blocks or china dolls or rubber dogs or linen books, because such materials were considered
cheap for the daughter of a king. When she was seven, she was allowed to attend the wedding of her brother and
throw real pearls at the bride instead of rice. Only the nightingale, with his lyre of gold, was permitted to sing for
the Princess. The common blackbird, with his boxwood flute, was kept out of the palace grounds. She walked in
silver-and-samite slippers to a sapphire-and-topaz bathroom and slept in an ivory bed inlaid with rubies. On the
day the Princess was eighteen, the King sent a royal ambassador to the courts of five neighboring kingdoms to
announce that he would give his daughters hand in marriage to the prince who brought her the gift she liked the
most. The first prince to arrive at the palace rode a swift white stallion and laid at the feet of the Princess an
enormous apple made of solid gold which he had taken from a dragon who had guarded it for a thousand years.
It was placed on a long ebony table set up to hold the gifts of the Princess suitors. The second prince, who came
on a gray charger, brought her a nightingale made of a thousand diamonds, and it was placed beside the golden
apple. The third prince, riding on a black horse, carried a great jewel box made of platinum and sapphires, and it
was placed next to the diamond nightingale. The fourth prince, astride a fiery yellow horse, gave the Princess a
gigantic heart made of rubies and pierced by an emerald arrow. It was placed next to the platinum-and-sapphire
jewel box. Now the fifth prince was the strongest and handsomest of all the five suitors, but he was the son of a
poor king whose realm had been overrun by mice and locusts and wizards and mining engineers so that there
was nothing much of value left in it. He came plodding up to the palace of the Princess on a plow horse, and he
brought her a small tin box filled with mica and feldspar and hornblende (types of ordinary rocks) which he had
picked up on the way. The other princes roared with disdainful laughter when they saw the tawdry gift the fifth
prince had brought to the Princess. But she examined it with great interest and squealed with delight, for all her
life she had been glutted with precious stones and priceless metals, but she had never seen tin before or mica or
feldspar or hornblende. The tin box was placed next to the ruby heart pierced with an emerald arrow. Now, the
King said to his daughter, you must select the gift you like best and marry the prince that brought it. The
Princess smiled and walked up to the table and picked up the present she liked the most. It was the platinum-andsapphire jewel box, the gift of the third prince. The way I figure it, she said, is this. It is a very large and
expensive box, and when I am married, I will meet many admirers who will give me precious gems with which
to fill it to the top. Therefore, it is the most valuable of all the gifts my suitors have brought me, and I like it the
best. The Princess married the third prince that very day in the midst of great merriment and high revelry. More
than a hundred thousand pearls were thrown at her and she loved it.
Moral: All those who thought that the Princess was going to select the tin box filled with worthless stones instead
of one of the other gifts will kindly stay after class and write one hundred times on the blackboard, I would
rather have a hunk of aluminum silicate than a diamond necklace.

Cinderella
Roald Dahl
I guess you think you know this story.
You don't. The real one's much more gory.
The phoney one, the one you know,
Was cooked up years and years ago,
And made to sound all soft and sappy
just to keep the children happy.
Mind you, they got the first bit right,

The bit where, in the dead of night,

The Ugly Sisters, jewels and all,
Departed for the Palace ball,
While darling little Cinderella
Was locked up in a slimy cellar,
Where rats who wanted things to eat,
Began to nibble at her feet.

She bellowed 'Help!' and 'Let me out!

The Magic Fairy heard her shout.
Appearing in a blaze of light,
She said: 'My dear, are you all right?'
'All right?' cried Cindy. 'Can't you see
'I feel as rotten as can be!'
She beat her fist against the wall,
And shouted, 'Get me to the ball!
'There is a Disco at the Palace!
'The rest have gone and 1 am jealous!
'I want a dress! I want a coach!
'And earrings and a diamond brooch!
'And silver slippers, two of those!
'And lovely nylon panty hose!
'Done up like that I'll guarantee
'The handsome Prince will fall for me!'
The Fairy said, 'Hang on a tick.'
She gave her wand a mighty flick
And quickly, in no time at all,
Cindy was at the Palace Ball!
It made the Ugly Sisters wince
To see her dancing with the prince.
She held him very tight and pressed
herself against his manly chest.
The Prince himself was turned to pulp,
All he could do was gasp and gulp.
Then midnight struck. She shouted, 'Heck!
Ive got to run to save my neck!'
The Prince cried, 'No! Alas! Alack!'
He grabbed her dress to hold her back.
As Cindy shouted, 'Let me go!'
The dress was ripped from head to toe.
She ran out in her underwear,
And lost one slipper on the stairs.
The Prince was on it like a dart,
He pressed it to his pounding heart,
'The girl this slipper fits,' he cried,
'Tomorrow morn shall be my bride!
I'll visit every house in town
'Until I've tracked the maiden down!'
Then rather carelessly, I fear,
He placed it on a crate of beer.
At once, one of the Ugly Sisters,
(The one whose face was blotched with blisters)
Sneaked up and grabbed the dainty shoe,
And quickly flushed it down the loo.
Then in its place she calmly put
The slipper from her own left foot.
Ah ha, you see, the plot grows thicker,
And Cindy's luck starts looking sicker.
Next day, the Prince went charging down
To knock on all the doors in town.
In every house, the tension grew.
Who was the owner of the shoe?

The shoe was long and very wide.

(A normal foot got lost inside.)
Also it smelled a wee bit icky.
(The owner's feet were hot and sticky.)
Thousands of eager people came
To try it on, but all in vain.
Now came the Ugly Sisters' go.
One tried it on. The Prince screamed, 'No!'
But she screamed, 'Yes! It fits! Whoopee!
'So now you've got to marry me!'
The Prince went white from ear to ear.
He muttered, 'Let me out of here.'
'Oh no you don't! You made a vow!
'There's no way you can back out now!'
'Off with her head!' The Prince roared back.
They chopped it off with one big whack.
This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,
'She's prettier without her head.'
Then up came Sister Number Two,
Who yelled, 'Now I will try the shoe!'
'Try this instead!' the Prince yelled back.
He swung his trusty sword and smack
Her head went crashing to the ground.
It bounced a bit and rolled around.
In the kitchen, peeling spuds,
Cinderella heard the thuds
Of bouncing heads upon the floor,
And poked her own head round the door.
'What's all the racket? 'Cindy cried.
'Mind your own bizz,' the Prince replied.
Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! she thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?
The Prince cried, 'Who's this dirty slut?
'Off with her nut! Off with her nut!'
Just then, all in a blaze of light,
The Magic Fairy hove in sight,
Her Magic Wand went swoosh and swish!
'Cindy!' she cried, 'come make a wish!
'Wish anything and have no doubt
'That I will make it come about!'
Cindy answered, 'Oh kind Fairy,
'This time I shall be more wary.
'No more Princes, no more money.
'I have had my taste of honey.
I'm wishing for a decent man.
'They're hard to find. D'you think you can?'
Within a minute, Cinderella
Was married to a lovely feller,
A simple jam maker by trade,
Who sold good home-made marmalade.
Their house was filled with smiles and laughter
And they were happy ever after.

THERE ARE MANY WAYS by which one text can refer to another: parody, pastiche, echo, allusion,
direct quotation, structural parallelism. Some theorists believe that intertextuality is the very condition
of literature, that all texts are woven from the tissues of other texts, whether their authors know it or
not. Writers committed to documentary-style realism will tend to deny or suppress this principle.
Samuel Richardson, for instance, thought he had invented an entirely new kind of fiction which was
quite independent of earlier literature, but it is easy to see in Pamela (1740), his story of a virtuous
maidservant who marries her master after many trials and tribulations, a fairy-tale archetype. The next
important English novel was Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742), which starts out as a parody of
Pamela, and incorporates a reworking of the parable of the Good Samaritan and many passages written
in mock-heroic style. Intertextuality, in short, is entwined in the roots of the English novel, while at the
other end of the chronological spectrum novelists have tended to exploit rather than resist it, freely
recycling old myths and earlier works of literature to shape, or add resonance to, their presentation of
contemporary life.
Some writers signpost such references more explicitly than others. James Joyce tipped off his readers
by entitling his epic of modern Dublin life Ulysses, Nabokov by giving Lolita's precursor the name of
Poe's Annabel. [] (Lodge, David The Art of Fiction. Illustrated from classic and modern texts.)
INTERTEXTUALITY A term coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966 to denote the interdependence of
literary texts, the interdependence of any one literary text with all those that have gone before it. Her
contention was that a literary text is not an isolated phenomenon but is made up of a mosaic of
quotations, and that any text is the 'absorption and transformation of another'. She challenges traditional
notions of literary influence, saying that intertextuality denotes a transposition of one or several sign
systems into another or others. But this is not connected with the study of sources. 'Transposition' is a
Freudian term, and Kristeva is pointing not merely to the way texts echo each other but to the way that
discourses or sign systems are transposed into one another - so that meanings in one kind of discourse
are overlaid with meanings from another kind of discourse. It is a kind of 'new articulation'. For
Kristeva the idea is part of a wider psychoanalytical theory which questions the stability of the subject,
and her views about intertextuality are very different from those of Roland Barthes and other theorists.
(Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory)
ADAPTATION Broadly speaking, the re-casting of a work in one medium to fit another, such as the
re-casting of novels and plays as film or television scripts. For example, Stephen Hero, A Passage to
India, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Les Liaisons dangereuses as stage plays; The Forsyte Saga,
Daniel Deronda, War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown as television
dramas. Sometimes a cycle or sequence is adapted: for instance, the dramatization of some of the
Canterbury Tales as a musical comedy (1967). Short stories and poems are often equally suitable.
ALLUSION Usually an implicit reference, perhaps to another work of literature or art, to a person or
an event. It is often a kind of appeal to a reader to share some experience with the writer. An allusion
may enrich the work by association and give it depth. When using allusions a writer tends to assume an
established literary tradition, a body of common knowledge with an audience sharing that tradition and
an ability on the part of the audience to 'pick up' the reference. The following kinds may be roughly
distinguished: (a) a reference to events and people (e.g. there are a number in Dryden's and Pope's
satires); (b) reference to facts about the author himself (e.g. Shakespeare's puns on Will; Donne's pun
on Donne, Anne and Undone); (c) a metaphorical allusion (there are many examples in T. S. Eliot's
work); (d) an imitative allusion (e.g. Johnson's to Juvenal in London).
COLLAGE (F 'sticking' or 'pasting things on') A term adopted from the vocabulary of painters to
denote a work which contains a mixture of allusions, references, quotations, and foreign expressions. It
is common in the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. The influence of surrealism in this
respect has been considerable.

IMITATION Three basic meanings can be distinguished: (a) copying or plagiarism; (b) the adoption of
the tone, style and attitude of another writer; a re-creation; (c) a representation. Literary theory during
and after the Romantic period regarded imitation in sense (b) as a somewhat inferior practice,
derivative, lacking in originality. Prior to that and for many centuries (especially during the r8th) it had
been regarded as a wholly respectable practice. Aristotle advocated it, so did Cicero and Horace. The
idea was that a writer should learn everything he could from the masters who were his predecessors.
This point of view prevailed during the medieval and Renaissance periods and continued into the 18th c.
Pope, who composed some of the best imitations (Imitations of Horace), gives the 18th c. view in An
Essay on Criticism (1711). Nowadays, imitation is seldom used as a critical term. When it is, it is
roughly synonymous with mimesis.
PARODY (Gk 'beside, subsidiary or mock song') The imitative use of the words, style, attitude, tone
and ideas of an author in such a way as to make them ridiculous. This is usually achieved by
exaggerating certain traits, using more or less the same technique as the cartoon caricaturist. In fact, a
kind of satirical mimicry. As a branch of satire its purpose may be corrective as well as derisive.
If an author has a propensity for archaic or long words, double-banked adjectives, long,
convoluted sentences and paragraphs, strange names, quaint mannerisms of expression, is sentimental,
bombastic, arch or pompous, then these are some of the features that the would be parodist will seek to
exploit.
Parody is difficult to accomplish well. There has to be a subtle balance between close
resemblance to the 'original' and a deliberate distortion of its principal characteristics. It is, therefore, a
minor form of literary art which is likely to be successful only in the hands of writers who are original
and creative themselves. In fact, the majority of the best parodies are the work of gifted writers.
The origins of parody are ancient. Aristotle refers to it in Poetics and attributes its invention to
Hegemon of Thasos who used an epic style to represent men as being inferior to what they are in real
life. Hegemon was supposed to have been the first man to introduce parody in the theatre, in the 5th c.
BC. However, the 6th c. poet Hipponax has also been credited with this.
Aristophanes used parody in the Frogs where he took off the style of Aeschylus and Euripides.
Plato also caricatured the style of various writers in the Symposium. Lucian used parody in his
Dialogues. It was so common among Latin authors that Cicero listed its varieties. In the Middle Ages
parodies of the liturgy, hymns and the Bible were fairly frequent. One of the first and best known
English parodies was Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas (c. 1383), a skit on some of the more absurd
characteristics of medieval romances (Chaucer was in turn to be well parodied by Alexander Pope and
W.W. Skeat).
Late in the Renaissance period Cervantes parodied the whole tradition of medieval romances in
Don Quixote (1605, 1615). Erasmus in Moriae Encomium (1509) and Rabelais in Gargantua and
Pantagruel (1534, 1532) turned scholasticisms upside down. Shakespeare parodied the euphuism of
John Lyly in Henry IV, pt I (1597), Marlowe's bombastic manner in Hamlet (c. 1603) and the general
style of Nashe in Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595).Later Sir John Suckling took off Donne splendidly as a
love poet, and in 1701 John Philips parodied Milton very cleverly in The Splendid Shilling. Somewhat
earlier Buckingham produced one of the few dramatic parodies which have survived contemporary
interest; namely The Rehearsal (1671), which mocked Dryden's The Conquest of Granada.
In 1736 Isaac Hawkins's A Pipe of Tobacco created a precedent because it was the first
collection of parodies of various authors' supposed attempts on a single subject. Fielding's burlesque
drama Tom Thumb appeared in 1730; and Fielding's Shamela (1741) was a complete parodic novel at
the expense of Richardson's Pamela (1740). To the 18th c. also belongs Sheridan's The Critic (1779), a
successful parody of sentimental drama and the malicious literary criticism of the period.
The Romantic period and the 19th c. provided a succession of ample targets for literary
inconoclasts. In 1812 James and Horace Smith published Rejected Addresses in which Scott,
Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Dr Johnson and others were parodied very successfully. Thereafter,
Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Poe, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris, the Rossettis,

Swinburne, Southey, Whitman, Hopkins and Kipling were quite frequently parodied, often by writers
equally distinguished. For example, Keats on Wordsworth, Byron on Wordsworth, James Hogg on
Wordsworth, Swinburne on Tennyson, C. S. Calverley on Browning, Lewis Carroll on Swinburne,
Hogg on Coleridge - and so forth. The favourite victims were Southey, Wordworth, Browning and
Swinburne.
Max Beerbohm refined parody to art, and his collection of his own parodies in A Christmas
Garland (1912), which includes pieces in the manner of Kipling, Galsworthy, Hardy, Arnold Bennett,
Edmund Gosse and others, is generally agreed to have set a standard which may never be surpassed.
In what has been described as the 'post Beerbohm' period of parody there is to be found as much
variety as in the 19th c. and often as much skill. James Joyce was a gifted parodist some of whose best
efforts can be found in the 'Oxen of the Sun' episode of Ulysses. A classic parody of the 1930s was
Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm (1932), a clever caricature of the primitivism of Mary Webb's
novels - and also, for that matter, of the primitivism of Hardy J. C. Powys and D. H. Lawrence. More
recent and talented instances are C. Day Lewis's parodies in Part V of An ltalian Visit, Cyril Connolly
on Aldous Huxley, Paul Jennings on Resistentialism, Kenneth Jr Tynan on Thornton Wilder - plus a
whole school of American parodists much of whose work has appeared in The New Yorker. The best
known of these are Robert Benchley, Peter De Vries, Wolcott Gibbs, S. J. Perelman, Frank Sullivan,
James Thurber and E. B. White. In 1960 Dwight MacDonald published Parodies: an Anthology from
Chaucer to Beerbobm and After, an admirable collection of vintage pieces. An accomplished
contemporary parodist in verse is Wendy Cope. There are some good examples in her collection of
poems Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986).
PASTICHE (lt pasta, 'paste') A patchwork of words, sentences or complete passages from various
authors or one author. It is, therefore, a kind of imitation and, when intentional, may be a form of
parody. An elaborate form of pastiche is a sustained work (say, a novel) written mostly or entirely in
the style and manner of another writer. A good modern example is Peter Ackroyd's brilliant The Last
Days of Oscar Wilde (1983), which is a diary.
PLAGIARISM (L plagiarius, 'kidnapper, seducer, literary thief') Hence plagiary, the noun and
plagiarize, the verb. C. T. Onions defined plagiarism as 'wrongful appropriation and publication as
one's own'. As such it is scelus semper et ubique. Much plagiarism has been the lifting, filching or
pirating of other people's works; a very common practice among dramatists during the Elizabethan
period when hackwriters blatantly stole the plays of others and presented them as their own. These days
(and for long past) such thieving is rare and authors are now fairly well protected by copyright.
There are other forms of literary felony and pilfering which have been regarded as less
reprehensible. These may be conscious or unconscious borrowing. In his conversations with
Eckermann, Goethe once pointed out that through all art 'there is filiation i.e. descent or transmission
from. If you see a great master, you will always find that he has used what was good in his
predecessors, and that it was this which made him great. Men like Raphael do not spring out of the
ground. They took their root in the antique and in the best that has been done before them.' This is a
point of view with which many would agree, from Aristotle onwards. Imitation was a practice fully
approved by the Classical authors (e.g. Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian) and it has been legitimate ever
since Homer, who himself borrowed from the ballads then alive in oral tradition. In fact, the balladmaker, almost by definition, is a borrower in the more acceptable sense of the term. The good balladmaker studies carefully what has already been achieved, learns from it and then attempts to adapt and
improve it on his own account. He assimilates, refines, modifies and, if he is gifted, he then produces
an original work of his own which will embellish the existing tradition. This is progress. The ballad
The Unquiet Grave exists in several versions over a considerable period of time and each is equally
good. There are no fewer than thirty-nine variants of Mary Hamilton - and again many of them are
equally good. To support the point we may cite Luther's highly successful re-using of the old Church
hymns, and. Burns's use of traditional material which he shaped anew to his own purpose.

Ballad-making is a popular art and entertainment. By analogy so are the Punch and Judy show,
music hall, proverbs, games, dance songs, festival rituals, fertility rites, folksongs and folk dramas (e.g.
the Mumming Play and the Plough Monday Play). All borrow.
Another form of borrowing involves the use of source-books. Shakespeare for instance, took
many of his plots from chronicles and well-established stories. Many of his contemporaries did the
same. Very often they transformed the source into an original work.
A less obvious example of the influence of source material can be seen in the plays of Molire,
who made such notable use of the traditions and techniques of commedia dell'arte.
Other kinds of source are legend and myth. The pervasive influence of these, in European
literature especially, has been considerable (e.g. Oedipus, Ulysses, Faustus, Don Juan, The Wandering
Jew). There are also innumerable instances of verbal 'borrowing'.
In general nearly all artists live off each other. They borrow from each other. Ultimately the
only true test is whether or not it is justifiable. Occasionally a man appears who is virtually a law unto
himself, the genius. After him nothing is quite the same ever again. Lesser mortals are content to follow
the rules and conventions, but to use them skilfully and with as much originality as they are capable of.
Occasionally there appears the literary iconoclast; the man who doesn't want to know about tradition,
who wants to make a completely clean start on the fabulous tabula rasa. They are nearly always of
inferior talents and achieve little that lasts. In fact, literary iconoclasm (like most other forms of
iconoclastic activity) usually creates a paltry mess.
In broader senses yet, the writer (the artist) is a borrower. Using what Coleridge, himself a
noted plagiarist, referred to as 'the hooks-and-eyes of memory' he stores and stocks his mind with the
experience and creations of other writers. He teaches himself from them and through them. The
creative mind matures this knowledge, allows it to macerate, so to speak, in what Henry James
described as the 'deep well of unconscious cerebration'. One can detect the results clearly enough in
many works. To take a few notable examples: Seneca was much influenced by the Greek tragedians; so
was Racine. Hosts of writers of all kinds have 'lived off' Aristotle and Plato. Milton was much
influenced by Spenser who owed much to Chaucer who, in turn, had borrowed from French and Italian
writers. Keats was much influenced by all three of these Englishmen. Pope, who had a profound
knowledge and understanding of the Classical authors, 'imitated' Horace. Dr Johnson, who had a
comparable knowledge and understanding, 'imitated' Juvenal. The Pre-Raphaelites borrowed
extensively from medieval authors (hence medievalism). And one can hardly imagine Dylan Thomas
and Ted Hughes being the fine Poets they are if they had not learnt much from Gerard Manley
Hopkins. W.H. Auden is an outstanding example of a poet who has used many long established poetic
forms and adapted them to his own individual needs and purposes.
Such men (and there are scores of others) are examples of good borrowers; the kind that Jonson
was thinking of (he understood the matter very well) when, in Discoveries, he spoke of the writer who
learns from his predecessors 'not as a creature that swallows what it takes in, crude, raw, or undigested;
but that feeds with an appetite' and hath a stomach to concoct, divide and turn all into nourishment'.
Jonson followed precept with practice, and no one could accuse him of lacking originality.
There are also plentiful examples of bad borrowing. This was particularly common in the 18th
c., largely as a result of the influence of Milton. 'Wordsworth in turn was to exert a great influence for a
hundred or more years, and even in the 1930s Poets were still writing ponderous ''Wordsworthese'.
Another notable example of wholly unsuccessful borrowing was the kind practised by 19th c. verse
dramatists who adopted the styles, conventions and even attitudes of the Elizabethan playwrights and
attempted to write dramatic blank verse like Shakespeare. Basically, writers like James Sheridan
Knowles, Shelley, Tennyson and Browning did not understand the conventions.
Self-plagiarism is not uncommon among writers, and is often unconscious. When conscious, it
usually involves the re-working of a poem, as in Collins's How Sleep the Brave, which he 'lifted' and
reshaped from Ode on Colonel Ross. Plain thieving has always been fairly rare, probably because the
risks of detection are too great. However, Sterne was often unscrupulous; so was Disraeli.