Love's labours won : the erotics of contemporary parody

Abstract

Intertextuality denotes not a state of affairs between texts, but the result of semiotic and deconstructive approaches to texts. It is, therefore, a historically founded literary phenomenon which -like all new approaches to texts- nevertheless contends, at least implicitly, that past perspectives on the interrelationship among texts are wrong. It seems as though the question of parody that is necessarily raised when one surveys contemporary American fiction cannot be approached intertextually. This essay nevertheless seeks to show that, as contemporary American literature has definitely absorbed intertextual tendencies and strategies to the point where they redefine the aesthetic value of texts as such, the traditional concept of parody has had to give way to a broader concept whose distinguishing feature can be seen as the attempt to recast, in seemingly synchronic fashion, the diachronic tradition of parody.