„No Story Comes from Nowhere‟, or, the Dentist from Finding Nemo: Ambivalent Originality in Four Contemporary Works

Abstract

This paper offers a perspective on a range of contemporary developments and articulations of the phenomenon of intertextuality in fiction and film. Using as backdrop a brief discussion of different intertextual motifs in Salman Rushdie‟s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), Paul Auster‟s Travels in the Scriptorium (2006) and Pixar‟s animated short film Boundin’ (2004), it moves on to discuss the highly intertextual relation between the works of Swiss writer Robert Walser and the contemporary American experimentalist Alison Bundy. The paper thus problematizes and qualifies the line of demarcation supposedly existing between texts or works of art and aims to expand and exemplify the scope of reference, citation and paraphrase inherent in the overall concept of intertextuality.