Decoding The Intertextuality In "Gertrude And Claudius"

John Updike is one of the most brilliant American writers in contemporary mainstream literary. He produced filled up a good many different themes, which won his reputation in the contemporary world literary scene. "Gertrude and Claudius" (hereinafter referred to as "GE"), written by Updike and published in 2000, is a full-length masterpiece. The novel was honored with the fourth of the Ten Best Book Awards selected by "The New York Times" in 2000. It is a text with qualities of Intertextuality."Intertextuality" denotes a determining interaction of reference and mapping relationship between a text and other texts. Here the text includes two senses: narrow and broad. In a narrow sense, a text refers to a real literary text, but in a broad sense it includes all entities which can produce meaningful symbols, such as painting, music, dance, advertisements, the Internet and so on. This paper both narrow and broad meaning.This paper is divided into three sections researching the intertextuality in "Gertrude and Claudius". The first part decodes the intertextual relationship between "Ge" and Shakespeare's classic tragedy "Hamlet". There is a coexisting relationship between "Ge" and "Hamlet" in many ways, such as the text materials, the story background, character relationship etc., meanwhile there is an innovative,subversive and derivative relationship between them in these ways: story plot, narrative point of view and themes. The second part explores the intertextuality between "Ge" and postmodern feminist critical theory. Focusing on women, subverting grand theme, and advocating women's voice and text description of the physical and sexual, which makes "Ge" producing intertextual relationship with postmodern feminist critical theory. The third part probes into the intertextuality between the "Ge" and other texts. In fact, the Intertextuality, either between "Ge" and "Hamlet" or between"Ge"and postmodern feminist critical theory, stems from the writer's intention. The former originated from the writer's creative tradition and deliberately antagonistic psychology ; The latter came from the writer's helpless response to the post-modern feminist critical theory and his sincere concern about women.