The intertext is the effective presence of a text in another one. This relation of co-presence between texts is the subject of the present book. Colum McCann’s work is studied here as a mosaic of references to and quotations from other texts.
In its dialogue with other texts, it absorbs and transforms them, and lets itself transformed by them. The multiple and complex relations that exist between them are approached in both synchronic and diachronic terms. Various modes of intertextuality – influence, intentionality, authority – are analyzed here and applied to McCann’s complete work. His novels and short stories denote a transposition of texts taken from the Bible or Irish mythology, but also Anglo-Saxon novels, plays or poems. Through McCann’s work, the present study highlights the articulation and interdependence of literary texts.
This study has the advantage of filling a gap. Indeed, critical books on McCann’s fiction
emphasize the importance of intertextuality in this work, but do not go into the subject in
greater depth. Therefore, it seems to be useful and innovative to decode McCann’s texts in the light of other texts, particularly when they quote them, refer or allude to them.
Contents
Parodic Transgression in the First Short Stories
A Version of an Irish Myth: ‘Cathal’s Lake’
The Intertext or the Reflection of Dislocated Ireland: Fishing the Sloe-Black River and Everything in this Country Must
The Influences of Fathers in Songdogs
Prophets of Israel in Manhattan Tunnels: a Biblically-Informed Reading of This Side of Brightness
Dancer and Readers: Framed and Framing Books
Zoli: a Mimetic and Dialogic Novel in Memory of the Oppressed
The Recreation of Voices in Let the Great World Spin
-The Paratext: Authorities in Crisis
-The Text: ‘as if anticipating the fall’
Intertextuality and Intentionality in TransAtlantic
Mirrors and Collages in Thirteen Ways of Looking
October 2016 | 9781782052241 | €39 £35 | Hardback | 234 x 156mm| 246 pages
Bertrand Cardin is Professor of English at the Université de Caen Normandie
Further information and a look inside the book at:
http://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Colum-McCann-s-Intertexts-p/9781782052241.htm