Transtextuality In Graham Swift's Last Orders

Graham Swift is the author of nine highly acclaimed novels and with Last Orders he won the Booker Prize in 1996.This thesis intends to analyze the intertextual and hypertextual features in Last Orders under the guidance of Gerald Genette's transtextuality theory so as to reveal the profound meanings of this novel.The theory of transtextuality will help readers get a better understanding through the comparison of this novel with other three literary texts.Last Orders parodies As I Lay Dying in terms of characters and the death motif;however,Last Orders is not a simple parody of As I Lay Dying but a thought-provoking and life-affirming novel.Last Orders is also replete with allusions to T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.The fates of the protagonists in Last Orders are under great influence of the Second World War,which corresponds to the faith crisis and spiritual crisis in The Waste Land.Last Orders,however,is not a simple suggestion or correspondence but a continuation and innovation of The Waste Land.Allusions to The Canterbury Tales indicate that the journey to fulfill Jack's last wishes is indeed a pilgrimage,during which the protagonists seek for salvation,truth and ponder over grand and universal issues such as life and death.The use of transtextuality to interpret Last Orders will help readers gain a deeper insight into this novel.