The Analysis Of The Importance Of Intertextuality In Understanding Chinese And Greek Myths And Its Different Representations

This thesis is to analyze the importance of intertextuality in understanding Chinese and Greek myths and point out the similarities and different representations of intertextuality in Chinese and Greek myths.Intertextuality has been a dominant term within contemporary literary and cultural studies. Traditionally it means that text is informed by other texts which the reader has read, the reader's own cultural context. The idea of intertextuality in the present study is broadened. In its broad sense, it refers to the intertextual relations between the text and the things beyond the text, which includes sociocultural intertextuality, factual intertextuality and generic intertextuality. In its narrow sense, it is the intertextuality in the text itself and the one between the text and some previous texts or texts afterwards.First, it reviews the major existing studies on intertextuality. It presents the research achievements of previous scholars and points out the different approach adopted in this thesis and the focus on intertextuality in understanding myths.Second, it provides a comparative analysis of understanding Chinese and Greek myths in terms of intertextuality in a broad sense from 3 aspects: sociocultural intertextuality, factual intertextuality and generic intertextuality. Sociocultural intertextuality refers to a kind of relation between the text and sociocultural knowledge. Sociocultural knowledge refers to the knowledge shared by a social community or most members of it. It includes the social conventions and norms which can control or dominate people's mind or actions psychologically and institutionally. This kind of knowledge is socially acquired and stored in the mind as a part of the memory. When needed, it can be retrieved as the background knowledge or schema. Without an exception, the lOpieces of Chinese myths and 10 pieces of Greek myths we have chosen have something to do with the intertextuality between the text and sociocultural knowledge to different degrees. It is shown from three angles: the necessity to know the main characters and background in the story, the cultural interpretation about symbols and the knowledge of some social customs, systems and conventions. The second aspect of intertextuality in a broad sense refers to the relation between the text and factual knowledge, which in this paper mainly refers to the necessary knowledge about the worldin the process of text comprehension. It is the noncultural and nonsocial knowledge stored in one's memory, including one's common sense. Many examples can be found in both Chinese and Greek myths such as the knowledge of specific time and places. The third aspect is generic intertextuality which centres on the relationship between the text and the text type. A certain text type has its own style and mode, and a particular genre is associated with particular modes of intertextuality. It's an essential part to relate the text to the knowledge about text type. For example, we can easily find some strange and magical scenes here and there in the myths. But readers accept them naturally because readers relate them to the text type.Besides the intertextuality in a broad sense, the myths are also analyzed in terms of intertextuality in a narrow sense. That is the intertextuality in the text itself and the one between the text and some previous texts or texts afterwards. The intertextuality in the text itself is actually co-text. In other words, if one needs to understand a certain part, he has to relate it to the previous information or information afterwards. Understanding myths is no exception. Intertextuality between texts is the traditional and typical interpretation. It means the interrelated relationship between different texts. Texts of different time and different place are interwoven as a whole or huge system. Any individual text exists as one part of this system. In this way, understanding the meaning of a text no more depends just on this text itself. It involves other relevant texts in the network to a greater degree. The 20 pieces of myths are analyzed from two angles in terms of the information from other texts. One is the use of the events or characters from other texts;the other is the use of allusions.Then it tries to summarize the similarities and differences of intertextuality in an inductive method. One example of the similarities is that the understanding of both Chinese and Greek myths involves intertextuality in a broad sense and in a narrow sense as well. The differences mainly lie in 5 aspects: length, subjects, sociocultural knowledge, genre and intertextuality between the texts.Finally, it summarizes the conclusion and tries to point out the practical values of the study and some limitations. A direct application of the above findings is in the field of foreign language teaching. Another practical value can be shown in the field of translation.