In this collection of essays Roman historical and biographical texts are studied from a literary point of view. The main interest of the author, Daniel den Hengst, professor emeritus of Latin at the University of Amsterdam, concerns the development of Roman historiography, the ways in which Roman historians present their work and the intertextual relations between these works and other literary genres.
Intertextual Loops in Modern Drama explores the intertextual conversations and palimpsestuous relations between modern and contemporary European dramatists such as Alan Bennett, Elfriede Jelinek, Milan Kundera, Heiner Muller, and Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, and canonical texts by novelists and dramatists including Choderlos de Laclos, Denis Diderot, Henrik Ibsen, and Franz Kafka. Witkiewicz and Jelinek represent avant-garde subversions and transgressions of Ibsen's theatrical naturalism.
The structure of this book covers three successive stages which seem necessary for a comprehensive treatment of the subject-matter. Stage I deals with the foundations of intertextual theory and hence is concerned with its axioms, concepts, and methods of analysis. Stage II presents various components of an intertextual morphology which in its entirety forms a classificatory system allocating each intertextual constituent, ecriture or genre its exact structural position. Stage III highlights selected aspects of a (yet unwritten) his tory of intertextuality..
