A Feminist Interpretation Of Intertextuality In Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit And Lighthousekeeping

The theory of intertextuality is a significant theory in the literary creation and literary reviews. Ever since Julia Kristeva coined it in the 1960 s, it has undergone great development with the help of different scholars. Most of the scholars, such as Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette and so on, hold that all the texts belong to a system of signs, which are open rather than closed. No text exists in isolation. This text has a correlation with past texts, present texts, and future texts. The presence of all the texts is like a web. Therefore, the interpretation of a text is no longer limited to one single text and other texts, sources or materials can be used as references. In this way, authors do not create their texts completely independently, but rather based on pre-texts. What’s more, readers are offered more originality to appreciate a text within the network of intertextuality based on their knowledge background. While countless reseachers apply the theory of intertextulaity to their critical works, many writers also choose to apply the theory in the compositon of their literary works, among whom is Winterson.Jeanette Winterson is renowned for her experimental writing techniques and her feminist stance. She frequently puts intertextuality into practice in composing her works to strengthen her themes. In her novels, some classic text, such as the Bible recurs as an intertext and certain types of intertexts, such as tales and feminist texts are her preferences as well. This thesis attempts to put her two novels Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit(1985) and Lighthousekeeping(2004) together and analyzes her use of intertextuality in these two novels from a feminist perspective. Through intertextulaity, on one hand, she appropriates well-established texts for her own use to break the patriarchal order, to extol female self-consciousness and to highlight the multiplicity of the world; on the other hand, Winterson forms and develops her own composition style. More importantly, her innovative application of mulitiple texts or different handling of the same text in her writing implies that women writers do possess originality and can achieve creativenss in writing.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One includes a brief introduction to Jeanette Winterson and her literary career, literature review of the two texts and an overview of the evolution of the theories of intertextuality and feminism. Chapter Two deals with Winterson’s intertextual use of the Bible in the two novels. Chapter Three discusses love tales as intertexts in these two novels, respectively “Beauty and the Beast”, and “The Red Riding Hood” in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and “Tristan and Isolde” in Lighthousekeeping. Chapter Four makes analysis of the major feminist texts in these two novels, which are Jane Eyre in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and To the Lighthouse in Lighthousekeeping. Chapter Five is the Conclusion.