The Journey: Work-Text-Intertext

The "text" is one of the keywords in the western literary theory; the research on the transmission from "work" to "text" plays an important role in the history of the western literary theory. If "work" can be seen as the substitute for "text" in the literary theory, with the transferring of theoretical perspectives and backgrounds, the subject of literary studies experienced three developing stages of "work", "text" and "intertext" under the diverse theoretical paradigms. This illustrates the changes and developments of the text studies in the western literary theory: "human-centered", "text-centered" and "rhetoric-centered".