An Intertextual Interpretation Of Cynthia Ozick’s Heir To The Glimmering World

Cynthia Ozick is one of the Jewish American literary treasures. With the Jewishtheme and Jewishness reflected in her novels, short stories and collections of essays,she is best known as the champion for the Jews and the Jewishness in contemporaryAmerica (Yang Renjing,2008:421). Her novel Heir to the Glimmering World whichsets in the middle of the1930s, is observed from Rosie’ point of view. It attempts toillustrate a Jewish family’s experience after it fled to America for shelter from theanti-Semitism persecution.Based on Julia Kristeva’s broad-sense intertextuality and Gerard Genette’snarrow-sense intertextuality, as well as the three devices of intertextuality, namely,citation, allusion and parody, this thesis attempts to study Heir to the GlimmeringWorld with the references of literary intertexts and non-literary intertexts.Through the theory of intertextuality, this thesis explores the rich intertextualfeatures concealed in this text, and with intertextual devices, it studies Ozick’s viewon assimilation and idolatry. In conclusion, it points out that intertextuality as atheoretical technique is embodied in the relationship between the novel and theVictorian fiction, Judaism, and Ozick’s Jewishness. Firstly, the novel cites fictions ofthe Victorian writers, displays characteristics of the Victorian works by the open andovert citation of character and theme. Secondly, the text embodies allusion of Judaism,shown by the utilization of “father and son motif”, American exile history and theconfrontation and assimilation between the Jewish marginalized culture and themainstream culture, thus revealing Ozick’s Jewishness. Finally, the novel parodiesOzick’s personal experience, as the protagonist Elsa, an incarnation of Ozick, exposesthe paradox of her Jewish and feminist identity, and sublimates her ironic views onsexism, assimilation and idolatry.This approach enriched readers’ understanding of the novel, and set off theinseparable ties between technique and subject, form and content in Ozick’s work.Therefore, it testified the close connection between the text and other concealed texts,author’s writing views and social, historical and cultural contexts.