The Genre of Trolls - Doria

other concepts elaborated by Bakhtin in the course of this thesis, and discuss
them in their respective contexts.
I have already presented Bakhtin’s understanding of dialogue in some
detail in chapter 1.2, and I will not repeat it here. However, the very notion
of intertextuality itself, the conception of the text as a mosaic of quotations,
is foreshadowed by Bakhtin’s analyses of the roots of the works of
Rabelais and Dostoevsky in carnival and Menippean satire (Bakhtin 1968;
Bachtin 1991). In other words, texts may absorb the characteristics of other
genres and cultural forms, and be transformed by them as well as re-model
them in their turn. In this respect, Bakhtin is more concerned with interdiscursivity
and intergenericity than with intertextuality, though he would
have employed none of these terms to describe his preoccupations. 6
Kristeva produced her work in the intellectual climate of the group involved
in the avant-garde journal Tel Quel, which boasted associates such as
Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and other prominent
theorists (Allen 2000: 30–35). Taking the Bakhtinian word as a point of
departure, she described the word not as “un point (un sens fixe), mais un
croisement de surfaces textuelles, un dialogue de plusieurs écritures: de l’écrivain,
du destinataire (ou du personnage), du contexte culturel actuel ou antérieur”
(Kristeva 1978: 83). 7 Kristeva operates with a fusion of writer and
addressee, and of addressee and cultural context. Through the word, the
text is situated within history and society which are viewed as texts read by
the author and into which he inserts himself by rewriting them. Diachrony
gives way to synchrony as the writer assimilates and reaccentuates anterior
texts (Kristeva 1978: 83). All texts are considered mosaics of quotations,
being the absorption and transformation of other texts. As a consequence,
intersubjectivity disappears and is replaced by intertextuality (Kristeva
1978: 85), signalling the emergence of an entirely textualized universe.
Gérard Genette has devoted much effort to developing the analytical
6 In this context I would like to point out that I do not regard Bakhtin as an intertextualist,
though I acknowledge his partial predilection for problems related to the research field
subsequently given that label. Nevertheless, much of his work is difficult to subsume under
this heading, and especially the later, psychoanalytical orientation of intertextuality is
hard to reconcile with Bakhtin’s more pragmatic view of things.
7 “… a point (a fixed meaning), but an intersection of textual surfaces, a dialogue of several
writings: of the writer, of the addressee (or the character), of the contemporary or anterior
cultural context” (my translation; cf. Kristeva 1980).
Intertextuality in the History of Research 23