Dissecting intertextuality: a literary interpretation in abdulrazak Gurnah’s by the sea and Gravel Heart

Texts do not truly reflect a clear and stable meaning; instead, they integrate society’s conflicting perceptions, uses of words, or quotations. As such, intertextuality establishes the context of a text throughout social context. Julia Kristeva merged the linguistic and literary theories of Ferdinand de Saussure and Mikhail Bakhtin based on her research into their respective works. And a new word, ‘intertextuality,’ has been coined to describe this kind of conceptual fusion. The use of this neologism marks a shift from structuralism to poststructuralism, and it characterizes the corresponding epoch of text and textuality. The movements imply transformation from one set of ideas to another. Various intertextual devices; semiotic features, literary forms, recurring motifs, figures of speech, quotes, etc., allow readers to track the texts’ antecedents’ influences. The author draws inspiration from and relies on them to take some of the book’s basic aspects and develop them further through the author’s creative career and imagination into a new literary work. This paper intends to look at the ways in which literary works conceptualize intertextuality and how this new framework affects the reading experience. The paper focuses on Kristeva, Barthes, Bakhtin, and other theorists’ concepts of intertextuality. It also argues that Abdulrazak Gurnah employs intertextuality not merely as a literary technique but as a postcolonial strategy through which fragmented histories, exile, displacement, and marginalization are represented. Through intertextual dialogue with both Western canonical texts and non-Western narrative traditions, By the Sea and Gravel Heart challenge Eurocentric narrative authority and reconstruct postcolonial subjectivity.