Nicholas Jones10 Jan 2006

I do know quite a lot about post-modernism and my PhD engaged with different notions of intertextuality, notably Bloom's theory of antithetical criticism. Theorists are divided as to whether all texts are intrinsically intertextual (as Kiristeva might argue) or whether it is generally a conscious writing strategy, the deliberate use of allusion to create a complex matrix of potential meaning. Which, of course, leads us into reader-response criticism and the idea that King Lear is about nuclear war; not, of course that he consciously intended this, but that a modern reader will re-interpret the text in light of their own experience.

Intertextuality is good. All poetry is written in response to what has gone before, all poetry is criticsm of other literature. Nicking lines from Dylan Thomas because you can't think of your own is just being a bit rubbish/