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Re‐thinking Textuality in Literary Studies Today
Author(s) -
Barry Peter
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2010.00758.x
Subject(s) - textuality , intertextuality , reading (process) , literature , focus (optics) , impossibility , literary theory , linguistics , psychology , literary criticism , philosophy , art , political science , law , physics , optics
With theory no longer the dominant force in literary studies, the literary text itself has again become a major focus. The article argues the need to re‐think notions of what ‘textuality’ consists of, acknowledging the impossibility of merely returning to ‘close reading’ or merely continuing with the ‘theorised reading’ of the recent past. Instead it advocates what it calls ‘textual reading’, which is an eclectic approach that takes elements from both. Textual reading requires attention to five specific aspects of the text, which are named textuality, co‐textuality, intertextuality, contextuality and multitextuality. These are defined and briefly illustrated, and some of the sub‐categories of each are discussed in the course of the article.