Articles with keyword: Intertextuality

Ancient Greek myths are an inexhaustible source of meanings. Mythical persons were consolidated as archetypal figures and took on a dramatic character in the context of ancient Greek tragedy. These persons, as familiar beings, are the trigger for later creators to express their own concerns and thoughts. Thus, a coupling of archetypes and influences of the era of each creator emerges. The theory of intertextuality is the expression of this coupling. Through intertextuality, the ancient myth and the new text meet at specific points – intertexts – without the ancient text losing its importance and value. Thus begins a conversation between the two texts. This conversation as a hybrid framework – as Baktin will call it – is the field for the expression of new intertextual conversations and quests. The new text resulting from this coupling is autonomous and functions as a response to the different social and historical stimuli, as well as the perceptions of the creators. In other words, alongside intertextuality goes the concept of reception, i.e. the way the creator perceives the myth, transforms it according to its values and perceptions. Within this context, the archetypal figure of the Beautiful Helen will travel from the ancient myth and the Euripidean Helen, at the end of the 19th century to confront the second Faust of the German philosopher and writer Goethe, while much later the important Greek poet Yannis Ritsos will place her in the context of the Fourth Dimension to express his own issues and concerns.

Our presentation will be structured, mainly, around three axes. At a first level, our interest is focused on the artistic representations of the archaic angiographies that were the reason for the composition of the two poems, the targeting, the connotations and their consequent role. At a second level we will highlight the poetic function of the "Funeral of Sarpedon" by Konstantinos Cavafy and Kyriakos Charalambidis, as well as the convergencesdiscrepancies between them. At a third level, we will detect the contexts, since the conceptualbridges that direct us in an intertextual walk towards the corresponding contexts of the Iliad are scattered, but also in any differences or upheavals that highlight the ideological meanings of each poem.

This paper gives an intertextual analysis of Ibrahim Abd Elmeguid’s novel Clouds over Alexandria, which happens to be the last novel of his trilogy about his hometown Alexandria. An intertextual analysis of a text often entails examining its meaning in light of other texts which are incorporated in it through parody, pastiche, citation, paraphrase, allusion, imitation, translation, to name but a few. The incorporated texts could be anything ranging from written works to fables, myth, paintings, songs, or movies since the word “text” has become an inclusive term of late. In his historical novel Clouds over Alexandria, which happens to be the last of his Alexandrian trilogy, Ibrahim Abd Elmeguid historicizes an important socio-political juncture in the history of the city, albeit a sad one which signals the downfall of the once cosmopolitan city and the rise of a less tolerant and colourful entity in its place during the Sadat regime in the seventies. Being a historical novel, Clouds over Alexandria understandably incorporates political and cultural elements. Interestingly, it is also infused with mythical overtones, the latter being a clear reference to the Hellenistic origin of the city and its Graeco-Roman heritage. Zeus, Europa, Antaeus, Hercules, Gaia and Alexander the Great permeate the fabric of the novel through mythological tales narrated lovingly and reverently by the characters. It is the aim of this paper to give an intertextual analysis of the artistic and ideological appropriation of those myths in an attempt to determine their significance or otherwise to the novel and the extent to which they are integrated into its structure.