Genette (1982) TRANSTEXTUALITY

All that sets the text in a relationship, wether obvious or concealed, with other texts. Anything that relates manifestly or secretly, a text with others

It is the textual transcendence.

Genette is not concerned with individual phenomenon, but with the way texts function within describable systems.

1-Paratextuality:it marks the elements at the entrance of the text,

which help to direct and control the reception of a text by its readers. It is the relationship of the text with its paratext. Its function is to guide the reader to understand when it was published, and how it should be read.

-Peritext: titles, chapter titles, prefaces, illustrations, notes, name of the author, prologue, index, cover.

-Epitext: what is outside the text proper: publicity announcements, reviews about the text.

2-Metatextuality: it is a relationship of commentary. It denotes

explicit or implicit references of one text on another text.

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It unites a given text to another, of which it speaks without necessarily citing it, or naming it. The typical example is the critic.

3-Architextuality:it relates to the designation of a text as part of a

genre or genres. The architectural nature of texts also includes thematic or figurative expectations about texts. It is a very important factor because it shapes the readers’ expectations and thus their reception of the work.

It may be made explicit in the paratext, however, it is generally implicit.

It is the relationship of the text with whole general categories it belongs to.

4-Hypertextuality:the relationship of a text with a text that precedes

it, from which it derives through transformation or imitation.

It is the relationship uniting a text B (hypertext) to an earlier text A (hypotext).

Thus, hypertextuality represents the relation between a text and a text genre on which it is based, but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends.

It includes parody, caricature, sequel, translation.

Genette believes that all texts are hypertextual, though sometimes the existence of a hypotext is too certain to be the basis for hypertextual reading.

Genette reminds the reader that a hypertext can be read either for its own individual value or in relation to its hypotext.

─Transformation:it is simple and direct. In order to transform a text a simple and mechanical gesture will suffice,(an extreme example would consist in tearing off some pages –a case of reductive transformation-). But in order to imitate a text it is inevitably necessary to acquire at least a partial mastery of it, a mastery of that specific quality which one has chosen to imitate.

One text derives from the other, on which it is inspired to transform it in some way. In the transformation, the hypertext (derived text) detaches from the original seeking a creation with its own features and meaning. Ways of transformation:

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──Parody: the hypertext imposes a minimal transformation of the hypotext. Ludic intention, a deviation with a minimal transformation.

It modifies the subject without altering the style.

──Travestissement : it modifies the style without modifying the subject. It transposes the noble style into the familiar or vulgar style.

It is a stylistic transformation whose function is to debase (to reduce the quality or value of something). One example is trasestissement by octosyllable.

──Transposition: The “serious transformation”. It is the most important of all the transformational practices. The hypertext detaches from the hypotext. Examples: translation and summary.

─Imitation: it is also a transformation, but more complex and indirect, one that involves a more complex process, it requires a previously constituted generic competence (a model), one that is capable of generating an indefinable number of mimetic performances. The imitating text does not lose the characteristics of original text. Ways of imitating:

──Caricature: it designates the satirical pastiche, à la manière de.

──Pastiche plain and simple: an imitation of style without any satirical intention.

──Sequel: a serial imitation that intends to prolong or complement a work.

5-Intertextuality: in a restricted sense, the relationship of copresence

between two texts or among several texts, eidetically and typically as the actual presence of one text within another.

It is the mechanism specific to literary reading. It alone, in fact, produces significance, while linear reading, common to literary and non literary texts produces only meaning.

Riffaterre’s intertextuality: is the perception, by the reader of the relationship between a work and others that have either preceded or followed it.

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It appeals particularly to the less explicit forms, to the receivers’ cultural and ideological competence. The decodification is easier when the allusion and quotation are within the stereotype and the “universal”.

When the intertextuality refers to more restricted cultural universes, the “recovering” of the allusion may imply difficulties, and the reader may even not being able to understand the allusion as such. Ways of intertextuality.

Quoting: with quotation marks, with or without references.

Plagiarism: an undeclared but still literal borrowing.

Allusion:in still less explicit and less literal guise, an enunciation whose full meaning presupposes the perception of a relationship between it and another text, to which it necessarily refers by some inflections that would otherwise remain unintelligible.

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