No text has its meaning alone; all texts have their meaning in relation to other texts. Since Julia Kristeva coined the term in the 1960s, intertextuality has been a dominant idea within literary and cultural studies leaving none of the traditional ideas about reading or writing undisturbed.

This book, the first full-length study of intertextuality in English, fills an important gap. Following all the major turns in the term's history, this handy guide clearly explains how intertextuality is employed in structuralist, post-structuralist, semiotic, deconstructive, reader-response, marxist, feminist and psychoanalytic theory. From the alternative origins of Saussurean linguistics and the work of Bakhtin the book traces the major directions of intertextual theory to the postmodern present.