Abstract:
This dissertation aims to demonstrate the intertextuality of Julia Kristeva’s novels with her own theoretical writings, revealing the connections between the two discourses and a continuity of thoughts by Kristeva as well as a desire to establish a dialog with the public in order to foster an evolution in mentalities. Despite the large number of works published on Kristeva, no one has analyzed how the four novels seem to be extensions and illustrations of Kristeva’s theories, creating an intertextuality between the texts, nor has anyone worked exclusively on the four novels together. Since the beginning of the present research, one author has published an article on intertextuality within Kristeva, but has limited the scope of her paper on the intertextuality of the characters between some of the novels. The corpus of this current work includes the four novels published before the mid 2000s: Les samouraïs (1990), Le vieil homme et les loups (1991), Possessions (1996), and Meurtre à Byzance (2004). These novels encompass two different genres: the roman à clef and the mystery novel. The theoretical frame of intertextual approach, as Kristeva developed it,is guided by her own theoretical writings about literature with Semeiotikè: Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Extraits) (1978). Another theoretical work, La révolution du langage poétique (1974), will also serve as references to provide a more complete definition of the concept of intertextuality. A large number of echoing ideas exist at various levels within Kristeva’s ample opus, therefore the present research will delimit the occurrences of intertextuality within the boundaries of alterity. Alterity will be defined within the parameters of foreignness as it is exposed in Kristeva’s theoretical work Étrangers à nous-mêmes (1988), as well as the concept of the woman and her position in the world, all of which makes her foreign, as Kristeva highlights it in the collection of articles Seule une femme (2013).
