intertextuality

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The idea that a given text is a response to what has already been written, be it explicit or implicit.

   “When one studies the intertextuality of "Hamlet", one realises that William Shakespeare must have read thousands of books.”

   “All of these issues—subjectivity, intertextuality, reference, ideology—underlie the problematized relations between history and fiction in postmodernism.”

   “From the translator's point of view, therefore, both types of intertextuality—or simply all kinds of intertextuality—are important, since the translator, ideally, ought not to deprive the reader of even a smallest chunk of the intertextual load of the original.”

2. (countable, uncountable)The reference to another separate and distinct text within a text.