Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature

Book excerpt: First published in 1996. Intertextuality the phenomenon is as old as literature itself. And to medievalists in particular, it was a critical commonplace long before the term was coined: we have routinely recognized that, during the Middle Ages, texts consistently borrowed from one another and from the traditions they all shared. Those borrowings can take the form of thematic echoes, of the appropriation of characters and situations, and even of direct citation. This volume is a collection of essays discussing the intertextual dimensions of Arthurian literature.