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This chapter is concerned with the many translations of Antigone from 1900 to the present, and with some of the ways in which these diverse translations establish for the reader without Greek the normative Antigone against which more radically transformed Antigones will be seen. It investigates selected aspects of text, paratext, and intertext, exploring translators' variously and subtly transformative choices as conditioned by their approach to translation, their choice of form and level of diction, and their interpretation both of the play as a whole and of particular passages. The chapter concludes by noting several features in the most recent translations that tend to enable a reading that is more aware of the relation between original and translation and between translation and reader.

The principal features to have emerged in the exploration of both classical and mythological, and Christian and biblical figures of speech in A la recherche underscore Proust's totality of vision and reveal the extent to which these sources are intertwined. Both Christian and mythological narratives are introduced in most thematic areas, and each intertext fulfils distinct, but interdependent, functions within a narrative evolution which is at times cyclical, at times sequential, and at times diffusely organic. Duality and disguise are the threads which bind them all together. Dualities of perspective create a tension between imagination and reality that is only sharpened by Proust's dramatization of the dualities of nature which suffuse the metaphorical structure of the novel. Above all, Christian and mythological texts provide the language of both comedy and tragedy in the novel, and more often a fusion of the two.

Synge and Joyce have most commonly been seen as opposites, divided by class, religion and background and by their differing attitudes to the ideals of the literary revival. Yet, examination of the pivotal meeting of Synge and Joyce in Paris in 1903 reveals that the hostility between them masks convergences between their aesthetic. Joyce plays with and restages aspects of Synge's work throughout his writings thereby indicating the extent to which he is haunted by the influence of his predecessor. It is particularly Riders to the Sea, the first text by Synge with which he closely engaged and that he initially rejected, which troubles and beguiles him, with its capacity to remould classical convention to deliver insights into the primitivist truths of Irish society and to invent a text that is defiantly different and modern. He returns consistently to Riders throughout his career and continues to reflect on its troubling radicalism.

This brief epilogue summarizes the methodology that has been employed throughout the book. Stress is placed on Seneca’s creation of personae, and this is shown to be a trait of his contemporary rhetoric. Seneca’s intertextual method allows him to reenvision his predecessors’ works in the tragic genre. In a nutshell, you are what you read; the multiplicity of influences on Seneca helps him create his tragic style, but he is always interested in creating something original from his source material.

The essay has three main sections. After an introduction discussing the historical context and the development of the commentary finally published in 1492 towards the end of Ficino’s life, section 1 considers the various levels of commentary detail, the contrast between more and less text-dependent styles of commentary, and the relation between non-intertextual and intertextual commentaries. Section 2 turns to Ficino’s notion of philosophical commentary as history of philosophy. It examines the notion that Plotinus’ philosophy itself is the interpretation of a tradition of ancient theologians and also a synthesis of Platonic and Aristotelian teachings very much on Plato’s terms. Section 3 considers the provocative notion that the reading of Plotinus’ text can be compared to and perhaps identified with the summoning and the colloquy of Neoplatonic daemons.

Such intertextual relations can be historicized in the survey of longue durée, either exemplarily or thematically, selectively, and therefore rather narrowly. With the latter options, the focus has tended to shift from linguistic text to thematized content and historical context and from literary writing to other expressions of culture and of society. These kinds of shifts from texts to theme, culture, and society are certainly viable. The intertext is a convenient term for a relationship or a series of relationships with a single text or multiple texts that enrich and reorient the signification and reception of the text in question. The intertext can be imagined on a continuum between deliberate imitation and intentional allusion, and on the other, an intertextuality in which the unlimited agency of the signifier operates virtually without regard for context, whether sentential and textually specific or broadly cultural, societal, and historical.

The opening line “A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine” in the first canto of the first Book of The Faerie Queene introduces the Chaucerian intertext and does so problematically. The problem in Spenser's first line centers on the word “pricking,” which has the perfectly straightforward and innocent meaning, to spurge or urge a horse. The word “pricking” is already conspicuous as the first verbal action in the opening line of Spenser's story, which occurs in a context designed to render its meaning specifically problematical. It causes some logical distraction and besides being narratively incongruous, the word “pricking” has a resonance and politely a doubleness of signification that some words simply lack. The greatest numbers of forms of the word “prick” occur in Spenser's second and fourth Books, and it is reasonable that they should do so.

Melville's short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” prefaces the consideration of post-Reconstruction literature. Bartleby, the Scrivener in the story forms a bridge between eras. It is an intertext connecting a minority viewpoint among antebellum writers, most of whom openly sided with antislavery, and the dominant condition of postwar authorship. Bartleby's echolalia, which infects his coworkers, also anticipates the hero's stutter in Billy Budd, Melville's own text that makes peace with the post-Reconstruction settlement. As an exercise in auto-censorship, the scrivener's mantra can be read as a displaced doctrine of aesthetic capitulation or accommodation.

This chapter displays how the younger Andrei Bitov recognized that Soviet policies disrupted literature's natural progression, resulting in a sense of belatedness for his “post-” generation: post-Stalin, post-Thaw, and newly postmodern. The Joycean intertext in Bitov's celebrated novel Pushkin House (Pushkinskii dom, 1964–71) spotlights the sources of the author's anxiety of influence and the character arc of his protagonist, Leva Odoevtsev. The latter attempts to rewrite his past by proposing alternative father figures but falters due to a distorted historical perspective. The chapter then demonstrates how Bitov uses his novel, and its extended conversation with Ulysses, to show how a writer can escape the self-imposed limitations that come with comparing himself with predecessors, even while taking joy in quoting from past works, including those of James Joyce. Through the responsible comparative readings, the chapter reveals how the combination of Bitov's circle and the accumulated effect of these various overt and covert allusions suggests a major response to Joyce.

This chapter discusses the thematic significance of omens and portents in Statius’ Thebaid. It also provides an overview of and considers its intertextual relationship with other Latin epics with respect to augury and other signs from the gods, and how human characters react to them. By comparing the different instances of augury and portents and filtering them through the lens of Roman religion, the signs given and the consequences of human responses to the signs provide clues to the disposition of the gods and the role of human will in each narrative. The main focus of this chapter is upon the Argive augury and portents, and the implications for the nature of the divine machinery, Fate, and the relationship between humans and gods. Statius’ unique approach to supernatural signs has thematic consequences for the poem as a whole.

This chapter inquires Donnie Yen’s martial arts body in blogosphere. It analyses that Yen’s kinetic body, often the focus of bloggers’ interest, is not only the corporeal entity that appears in individual films he starred in and become famous for, such as SPL: Sha Po Lang, Ip Man, and Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen. It is also an outcome of sundry participatory forces, bridging the martial arts body to the elements in extra-diegetic settings such as Hollywood sci-fi genre, martial arts culture and hip hop culture. It, hence, appears as an intertextual phenomenon which bloggers keep reworking and renegotiating Chinese nationalism in tandem with cyber legends of Ip Man, Bruce Lee, and Chen Zhen. This chapter also pursues to discuss how the Chinese body of Yen is further questioned and complicated when users mix symbolic components drawn from Chinese or non-Chinese systems, and how the offscreen existence of Yen shows both resonance and incongruity to his screen personae complicating his martial arts image. This chapter ultimately argues that these new forms allow bloggers to revisit, represent, and contend the ethnic representation of Yen.

This chapter counters universal readings of Brokeback Mountain (2005) as either a simplistic pastoral that romanticizes the American West, or a universal love story in service of gay normalization by highlighting how the film accounts for its historical setting and by focusing on how it frames its protagonists in relation to the natural world. It also brings new attention to the 1964 film Surf Party, which Brokeback Mountain briefly excerpts. Through a comparative reading, the chapter shows this seemingly frivolous beach romp to be a crucial intertext: like Brokeback, it depicts the policing of illicit desire in a natural context. The chapter concludes with an exploration of how, through its commentary on access to natural public space, Brokeback Mountain critiques the contemporary state of Western and, especially, U.S. gay politics.

This Impromptu is a detailed analysis of Augustine's 9th Homily on the First Epistle of John, in order to illustrate the various aspects of patristic preaching which have been identified in Chapter 5. It examines Augustine's rhetorical and exegetical techniques and shows how he opens up the text so that it can engage the attention and understanding of his listeners; inform, admonish, encourage, resonate with, inspire and ultimately, transform their hearts, minds and lives. Particular attention is drawn to the extemporary, improvisatory quality of Augustine's preaching in achieving these goals.

In the introduction to the volume, the editors assess the need for the collection and situate it within the current state of research in opera studies, especially focusing on the past 30 years, since the publication of Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker’s Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner (University of California Press). Although a number of books and individual articles that heed Abbate and Parker’s call to examine the music of opera within the context of its other constituent elements (e.g., plot, characterization, setting, performance) have appeared in the intervening time, the volume is the first contemporary English-language effort since that time to demonstrate this approach to analysis in action across an array of repertoire. The introduction also includes an overview of the chapters and their arrangement by authors’ semiotic focus: composer-created and work-specific structures, cultural and social codes, and narrative. Finally, the editors comment upon the broader themes that emerge from these essays.

After a brief introduction to the central themes of the book, this chapter focuses on the passage DRN 1.136–45, considering in turn the issues of egestas linguae and rerum novitas. It considers the rhetorical topos of egestas linguae in its first-century BC context, and suggest that its fairly prominent position in the linguistic discourse of DRN should be connected to the extraordinary linguistic creativity that is on show throughout the poem. On the topic of rerum novitas the chapter seeks to identify the proem to Meleager’s Garland (as well as the Garland itself) as a salient intertext behind Lucretius’ account of his own poetic ambitions.

Chapter 6 synthesizes and distills the major theories and analytical methods in the book’s first five chapters into the analysis of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song,” from Amnesiac. The majority of the chapter focuses on the process of interpreting this music based on a listener’s knowledge of certain intertextual sources. Potential external sources of meaning addressed in this chapter include Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the visual imagery encoded in Radiohead’s own promotional material from Kid A and Amnesiac, and two contemporaneous films featuring imagery that aligns with either. After analyzing the form, rhythm, timbre, and harmony of the track, the chapter concludes with an analysis of the music video. The goal of this final chapter is to demonstrate an analytical method that can be adapted for any Radiohead song.