Examining Authors, Discourse and Characters

Abstract

The contemporary debate on the Canon and on how writers, texts and readers are influenced by its alleged centrality and exclusiveness is enlarged with a discussion on intertextuality as processed at the level of three novels: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing and Possession by Antonia Susan Byatt. By studying the intertextual references within and outside these novels, the present paper aims at revealing the perspectives their authors share (or not) regarding
canonical writings, concepts or techniques. The focus is placed on a comparative and contrastive analysis of the corpus in question with regard to Bakhtin’s introductory terminology on intertextuality, which at some points overlaps the views of other critics on the same matter.