Questions: Kristeva's Theory of Intertextuality

Question 1

A novelist claims to have written a book with no references to any other works. According to Kristeva's theory, this claim is:

• A. Plausible — intentionless writing is achievable through careful composition
• B. Verifiable — scholars could confirm it by checking the author's reading history
• C. Necessarily false — no text can exist outside the mosaic of prior language and discourse, regardless of intent
• D. Possible in principle, though rare in practice for highly allusive genres

Answer: (C)

Kristeva's point is that intertextuality is not about intent. Language itself carries traces of every prior use — the very words and structures the novelist employs arrive already saturated with prior discourse. The author cannot opt out of intertextuality by avoiding deliberate allusions, because intertextuality is a structural condition of language, not a stylistic choice.

Question 2

A literary scholar analyzes a poem by systematically tracing every source text the poet demonstrably read and borrowed from. This approach is most consistent with:

• A. Kristeva's intertextuality, which focuses on conscious textual borrowings
• B. Traditional source study and influence tracing — an approach Kristeva's framework critiques as too narrow
• C. Genette's transtextuality, since it maps hypertext relations between texts
• D. New Critical close reading, which treats the text as an autonomous object

Answer: (B)

Kristeva explicitly distinguishes her concept from source study and influence tracing, which ask 'which prior texts did this author consciously use?' Her framework attends to the involuntary, structural infiltration of all prior discourse — including language the author never consciously encountered. Source study captures only the deliberate tip of the intertextual iceberg.

Question 3

For Kristeva, intertextuality is a technique that skilled writers deploy to enrich their texts with meaningful allusions.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This precisely inverts Kristeva's claim. Intertextuality is not a technique any writer uses or avoids — it is a structural condition of all language and all texts. Every text is constituted by the prior field of discourse whether the author intends intertextual effects or not. Calling it a 'technique' reduces Kristeva's radical structural claim to a description of stylistic allusion — the very thing she sought to move beyond.

Question 4

Kristeva's concept of intertextuality challenges traditional literary history's attempt to establish clean chains of influence from one text to another.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

If every text is woven from the entire prior field of discourse in ways that cannot be traced to specific sources, then the 'text A influenced text B' model of literary history becomes inadequate. Kristeva's framework suggests that the relationships between texts are dispersed and structural — texts are constituted by the entire field of previous discourse — not linear chains traceable to individual sources.

Question 5

How does Kristeva's claim that every text is a 'mosaic of quotations' differ from the observation that texts sometimes allude to other texts?

Model answer: Allusion is a deliberate rhetorical device — the author consciously invokes another text to borrow its weight or meaning. Kristeva's mosaic claim is structural: because language is a shared, inherited system marked by every prior use, no text can exist outside the field of prior discourse. A novelist who alludes to Dante is using intertextuality intentionally; a novelist who never mentions Dante is equally participating in a web of language saturated with prior voices, whether they intend it or not. Intertextuality is unavoidable, not optional.

The key distinction is intent vs. structure. Allusion tracking asks 'what did the author choose to reference?' Kristeva asks 'what discourses permeate this text regardless of authorial choice?' The mosaic extends far beyond any inventory of conscious borrowings — it includes the words themselves, the genres used, the ideological assumptions embedded in the language, all of which arrive pre-loaded with prior discourse.