Jamie,
The first part of Barthes quote which you say supports your argument is:
“[A text is] ‘not a line of words releasing a single [...] meaning but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash’.”
I don’t think I’m arguing against this either. The second part is:
“[…] ‘The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination’.”
I also agree with this, and do say in my article that:
“In light of this, the use of multiple registers and intertextuality in poetry can be seen as the systematic outworking of this more general observation about language and texts.”
When I go on to say specifically regarding Forrest-Thompson’s use of intertextuality:
“With regard to her intertextuality in ‘The Garden of Proserpine’, mythical and literary figures are mentioned. Aphrodite, Zeus, Pleiades, Dis, Sappho, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Tennyson, Eliot, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus are all brought into play. However, it is unimportant whether the reader knows who they are. It is enough that they appear. They function as intertextual metonymic ciphers to be appropriated by the reader for his or her own personal exegesis. If the reader is aware that Aphrodite is the goddess given by Zeus in marriage to Hephaestus, or that Dis is the Roman name for Hades, the god of the underworld, all well and good. However, it is
not essential information.”
This is partly based on a Reader-Response/Reception Theory approach to her work. The article was originally part of my PhD thesis, in a chapter dealing to some extent with Reception Theory. Besides, in purely practical terms, and for the benefit and enjoyment of poetry by readers who might not be familiar with the intertextual references in a poem, I do think that “it is not essential information”. To argue otherwise is to be slightly elitist, in my view.
-----Original Message-----
Jeff,
I've no idea whether any attitude to Richards' concept is one that I'd share
with many mainstream poets but I rather doubt it. It's tedious to wheel out
this old mainstream routine to discredit what I'm arguing - we can quite
happily disagree without a whole set of stale characterisations clouding the
issue.
I think at least the first part of the Barthes quotation rather supports
my argument than yours, not that I need it. The second part where he claims
"The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing
are inscribed without any of them being lost" also seems to me to posit a
reader who is not as careless and profligate about the meanings within a
text as your reader is: "...all well and good. But it is not essential
information." Mine was not an argument to accept intertextuality "at face
value", whatever you mean by that, but rather to look carefully at it.
Still, I think you're right we're unlikely to convince each other and
it's probably not worth any further effort.
Jamie
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