Intertextuality in Practice

The books we've read, the films we've seen, the stories we've heard - and just as importantly the ones we haven't - form an integral part of our identity. Recognising a reference to a text can result in feelings of pleasure, expertise and even smugness; being lost as to a reference's possible significance can lead to alienation from a text or conversation. Intertextuality in Practice offers readers a cognitively-grounded framework for hands-on analysis of intertextuality, both in written texts and spoken discourse. The book offers a historical overview of existing research, highlighting that most of this work focuses on what intertextuality `is' conceptually, rather than how it can be identified, described and analysed. Drawing on research from literary criticism, neuroscience, linguistics and sociology, this book proposes a cognitive stylistic approach, presenting the `narrative interrelation framework' as a way of operationalising the concept of intertextuality to enable close practical analysis.