How does "Boating for Beginners" (Jeanette Winterson) use intertextuality to comment the world?

Résumé du document

Boating for Beginners is a novel by Jeanette Winterson which belongs to post-modern literature and can be defined as a re-writing of the Bible. In her text, she uses a literary device called intertextuality in order to make comments on what she thinks is wrong in our modern society and for what reason. Intertextuality is one of the five transtextual relation types given by Genette. It is not something proper to post-modern literature; however, it is a constant feature in post-modern texts. According to Genette's definition, intertextuality is "a relation of co presence between two texts or among several texts" and "the actual presence of one text within another" (Graham Allen, Intertextuality, London, Routeledge, 2000, p.101), the presence of the other text can be presented either by a quotation, mimesis or allusion.

Extraits

[...] Ribaldry which aims at humor is drawn by Marlene and her desire to get her penis back: used to call it my sleeping snake and now there is only a nest.”(Ibid. 37) The bildungsroman is also turned into a comic novel of education with Gloria and her fragmented who will never reach the last stage of her development even though she made her best to follow Northrop Fry's theory (Ibid. 44). The detective novel is also present with Desi discovering the manuscript where Noah explains how he created God (Ibid. [...]

[...] God and Noah's desire to flood the world are related to two historical events which both had a terrible outcome: In the Genesis, the Flood was meant to purge humanity from all her vices, in Boating for Beginners it appears to be the contrary since it is villains” who are meant to survive. YAHWEH's childish attitude combined to his greed and vanity makes his decision to flood the world a very capricious one which reminds us of the Second World War and its atomic bombs which were the result of greed and power quest. [...]

[...] What the author criticizes appears not to be the Bible and its characters but rather the society in which they live, hence the comical tone. As Linda Hutcheon explains it, parody is not necessarily mocking and the target is not always the previous text which only helps as a means to criticize contemporary society and turns it into what she calls “Satire Parody”. Contrary to parody, satire's target is not literature which belongs to intratextuality, but society which is the real world, therefore an extratextual phenomenon. [...]

[...] 91) Without forgetting the grotesque creation of God out of piece of gateau and a giant electric toaster.”(Ibid. 85) The author also borrows themes of different literary genre which gives a comic effect to the novel. She borrows themes of the low comedy such as slang want his (Ibid. drunkenness (Ibid. 115), and slapstick is emphasized by Noah and Bunny Mix's rowdy behaviour: “Noah was beside himself, and taking the rabbit by the hair he pulled her into the garden.” (Ibid. [...]

[...] 175) As a matter of fact, Jeanette Winterson gives a totally new version modern one) of the biblical event of the Flood by turning Noah, Japeth, Ham, Shem and God into living characters the borders between fiction and reality have thus disappeared. Besides, Boating for Beginners is full of surprise; Noah turns out to be an unscrupulous businessman and his sons are submitted to his authority and obey him, while God is turned into a childish, selfish, proud and rude creature. [...]