Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Text analysis and history Tekstanalysis and History Session Seven: TRAVEL WRITING. Richard Holmes, ”In Stevenson’s

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

Text analysis and history

Tekstanalysis and History

Session Seven: TRAVEL WRITING.

Richard Holmes, ”In Stevenson’s Footsteps”



Agenda

An introduction to intertextuality and postmodernism

Group work: Richard Holmes, ”In Stevenson’s Footsteps”

Group presentation and discussion Assignment Two



Intertextuality

[…]the multiple ways in which one literary text is made up of other texts, by means of its overt or covert citations and allusions, its repetitions and transformations of the formal and substantive features of earlier texts, or simply its unavoidable participation in the common stock of linguistic and literary conventions and procedures that are ”always already” in place and constitute the discourses into which we are born. (Abrams, 317)



Graham Greene, ”I Spy”

At last he got his courage back by telling himself in his curiously adult way that if he were caught now there was nothing to be done about it, and he might as well have his smoke. He put a cigarette in his mouth and then remembered that he had no matches. For a while he dared not move. Three times the searchlight hit the shop as he muttered taunts and encouragements. ’May as well be hung for a sheep,’ ’Cowardly, cowardly custard,’ grown-up and childish exhortations oddly mixed. (535)



Idioms

I might as well be hanged/hung for a sheep as a lamb.

Cowardly cowardly custard, can't cut the mustard!



Jeanette Winterson, ”The 24-Hour Dog” I gave him a name. It was Nimrod, the mighty

hunter of Genesis, who sought out his quarry and brought it home. (14)



James Joyce, ”The Dead”

Intertextuality: ”He was undecided about the lines from

Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better” (NE2, 2174).



Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad: Or the New Pilgrims Progress

Intertextual references: John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, from

this world to that which is to come (1678-1684)

Romance: Quest Pastoral Picaresque



R.L. Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey …

Intertextuality: John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, from

this world to that which is to come (1678-1684): pp. 14, 32

Romance: Quest Pastoral Picaresque






”Homer Scream”



”Lisa Scream”



Edward Munch, ”Skriket”












Consequences of intertextuality: postmodernism Any text is an intertext - a text which is made

up of other texts From work to text:

the death of the Author and the birth of the text



John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress



Group work: Richard Holmes, "In Stevenson's Footsteps" the non-fictional aspects, especially essay

memoir and autobiography the aspects of displaced romance: quest,

picaresque, pastoral the allegorical aspects, especially concerning

reading and writing The intertextual aspects

Documents

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Text analysis and history Tekstanalysis and History Session Seven: TRAVEL WRITING. Richard Holmes, ”In Stevenson’s