New novels are frequently old ones in disguise, especially when authors linger too much in the shadow of their predecessors. At the same time, the dialogue established between the most various texts implies a challenging process of rejuvenation, which conserves the monuments of the past by subtly and subversively interrogating them. It is not surprising then that postmodern writers have discovered and enjoyed the confrontation inherent in the paradoxical nature of intertextuality. On the one hand, they have explored its positive implications, the fact that it links all literary productions in a common network, annihilating the limits of the individual creations and including them within a larger transpersonal text; on the other hand, authors have been challenged to contradict the idea that, since everything has already been written, they can never be original and, accordingly, are always liable for plagiarism. Marina Warner"s novel Indigo (1992) and Peter Greenaway"s film Prospero"s Books (1991) are recent illustrations of a famous intertextual series, starting with Shakespeare"s The Tempest and containing an impressive list of fictional and nonfictional works. 1 In both Warner"s novel and Greenaway"s film, colour and water symbolism favour a holistic interpretation of intertextuality. Instead of emphasizing the process of fragmentation, the boundary crossings between texts, and the contamination of texts by other texts, these works highlight the complementary process of intertextual reorganization, attempted with the help of new units offered to the reader.
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