strategy of Intertextuality

This book investigates the strategy of intertextuality in the works of J. M. Coetzee, particularly in In the Heart of the Country, Foe and Disgrace. It also argues that Coetzee's use of intertextuality serves many purposes, some of which are to establish a dialogue between his works and those from the major Western and Eastern literatures as well as reacting against them. This work is divided into four parts. In the first chapter, the author discusses the concept of intertextuality and its different forms. The achievements of the French theoreticians, like Julia Kristeva and others, are central to this stage. As for the second chapter, there he tries to find an affinity between Magda's situation and her cited sources. The third section shows how Coetzee's choice to rework Defoe's text is meant by to exploit the tension between the centre and the margin, by challenging the primacy of the Western standards that assume universality and reversing the function of the original text. The last chapter deals with the relationship between the novel's protagonist, David Lurie, and the Romantic poets, especially Lord Byron and William Wordsworth.