Intertextuality: Reinforcing Thematic Subjects in The English Patient

Abstract

No text is a complete creation of its author; rather, it is constructed through the process of interconnections of textual elements of the relating texts and the author’s creativity (Ahmadian and Yazdani, 2013, p 155). All texts have a particular relationship with the models, narrative structures and characters in part from previous texts. Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-French literary critic who was influenced by both Saussure’s and Bakhtin’s theories, coined a special term for these texts; intertextuality. The crux of intertextuality is that the author is not the sole source of the meanings of the text. However, the intertextual elements combined with the author’s creativity produce the whole and final construction of the text. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje is a novel richly encapsulated with intertextual elements. The readers need to understand the intertexts mentioned in the novel so that they can understand the core themes of the novel. If the novel is striped off these intertextual elements, it becomes no more than a love story in the time of war. This article is an attempt to analyze and decode those intertextual layers the writer has put there as extra meaning to his novel.