The Term Intertextuality

Categories: Pride And Prejudice

Intertextuality, or the link between two texts, has long been recognized as a very important part of literature from the classics, like Plato, Aristotle, Horace and Longinus, to Bakhtin, Kristeva and others twentieth-century theorists such as Genette, Barthes, Derreida and Riffaterre, among others. (Alfaro, 1996:269) According to The Collins dictionary "the term intertextuality refers to the relationships or links that may be found among different books or texts". It has changed the readers' and writers' understanding of the modern and postmodern literature.

Jane Austen classic novel Pride and Prejudice isn't exception. It's still inspires nowadays writers, filmmakers, illustrators and visual arts performers.The intertextuality between Jane Austen Pride And Prejudice and Helen Fieldings Bridget Joness Dairy, generates the reader's expanded understanding of a postmodern text's meanings. The Intertextual figures (allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche and parody) are used in the Helen Fieldings novel. (Genette, 1997) The interconnection helps to reflect and influence an audience's interpretation of the text. The knowledges about the links between Austen's and Fielding novels are doing influence on reader's perception.

Get quality help now
RhizMan
RhizMan
checked Verified writer

Proficient in: Free Essays

star star star star 4.9 (247)

“ Rhizman is absolutely amazing at what he does . I highly recommend him if you need an assignment done ”

avatar avatar avatar
+84 relevant experts are online
Hire writer

Intertextuality, the interrelationship to other previous texts is submitted among Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice and Helen Fieldings Bridget Jones Diary through the overarching similarity of plot, protagonists characters and social acceptance.

The Bridget Jones's Diary is a laugh-out-loud reinterpretation, of "stole" Jane Austen's novel plot. Helen Fieldings novel was directly influenced by the 200 year old love story. The allusion to Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice are incontrovertible, because Bridget Jones' Diary author Fielding told that "when she started writing her first novel about Bridget, she only had a collection of her original newspaper columns from the Independent featuring the character, but no plot.

Get to Know The Price Estimate For Your Paper
Topic
Number of pages
Email Invalid email

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy. We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

"You must agree to out terms of services and privacy policy"
Write my paper

You won’t be charged yet!

(Caitlin, 2016). Fielding (2013) said in her interview sincerely and openly, "And so I just stole the plot ... and then the book increasingly began to mimic and nick stuff from Pride and Prejudice. But it's a very good plot and I thought Jane Austen wouldn't mind, and anyway she's dead."First of all, the characters of Bridget Jones and Elizabeth Bennett are likewise placed with the challenges and love crisis they endure from. Both their mothers behave stupidly, and they are impatient to get young woman married.

Similarly, in Bridget Jones Diary, Bridget's mother introduces her to a recently divorced, wealthy man. Bridget is certain on her mother's motives and she claims, I don't know why she didn't just come out with it and say Darling, do shag Mark Darcy over the turkey curry, won't you? He's very rich. (Fielding 12). Secondly, both protagonists fall in love with a man whose last forename is " Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice) vs. Mark Darcy (Bridget Jones's Dairy). (Gymnich, and Kathrin, 2010)Moreover, both protagonists have parallel feelings. To look deeper, we have found more similarities between Bridget and Elizabeth's traits of character. They both are impulsive, suborned, embarrassed and passionate, by their mother.

Obviously, it is difficult to imagine Elizabeth having harmful habit: smoking, drinking, overeating. The Bridget's thoughts openness is related to postmodern cultural context. She was listed her short time daily lifes plans:"1. To put the social skills from the article into action. 2. To make Daniel think I have inner poise and want to get off with me again. No. No. 3. To meet and sleep with sex god.4. To make interesting contacts in the publishing world, possibly even other professions in order to find new career." (Fielding, 54)To summarize, Elizabeth and Bridget has separate life style. The self-expression of these women is different and depends on the values, physical and mental freedom, and the women rights in the society. The two hundred year is giant leap in human brain evolution. Elizabeth lives in the calm society, but Austen's ironical way of depicting Elizabeth allows her to present her heroine as both a "proto-feminist" and a "fairy-tale heroine". (Brownstein, 1997:54)

Bridget has plenty of possibilities to express herself: to work, to have leisure time, to get married or not and etc. She is acting like pop culture heroine, but seeks the deep feelings, strong relationship.The social acceptance is still relevant problem in the British society. Until these days the women social status depends on many different dimensions, but the marriage is one of the most important aspects. As the novel Austen's Pride and Prejudice shows, to find a man was as difficult for the eighteenth-century women.

Elizabeth Bennett had some possibilities to get the social acceptance and equality in the eighteenth-century: the marriage, governess, aging spinsterhood at home, or becoming a teacher. (Bush, 1975) The modern woman, as show Bridget in the novel, has the same experience in the twentieth-century. She wants to get married not either for economic reasons, but she needs the right social status. According to Widlund (2005), another similarity between the novels is that both Austen and Fielding use irony as a narrative strategy in order to criticize the societies they live in, particularly with regard to its gendered values. There are plenty Austen's novels' adaptations, interpretations during twenty-century. Bridget Jones's Diary relies on the following feature:

  1. This mode of writing does not aspirate to to originality, but consciously aims at reworking the parent text, a fact readers are expected to acknowledge;
  2. It refers to other adaptations of Austen in various media;
  3. It is inherently comparative, requiting readers to read a particular text through adaptations of the same parent text;
  4. It is thoroughly commercial in nature.

(Nјnning, 2012)Bridget Joness Dairy is greatly imaginative novel that has the relation with Pride And Prejudice. It's recognizable the intertextual links of the plot, protagonists characters and social acceptance. The postmodern society has changed regarding the objective distance between the eighteenth and twenty centuries. Bridget's behaviour depends on the postmodern society values, technologies development, and feminism movement. Bridget's thoughts merges Elizabeth's mind and composes perfect chick lit reading.

Updated: Nov 01, 2022
Cite this page

The Term Intertextuality. (2019, Aug 20). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-term-intertextuality-essay?post

The Term Intertextuality essay
Live chat  with support 24/7

👋 Hi! I’m your smart assistant Amy!

Don’t know where to start? Type your requirements and I’ll connect you to an academic expert within 3 minutes.

get help with your assignment