The Janus allusion: Intertextuality in novels and plays by Susan Sontag and Marie Redonnet

My investigation explains one specific intertextual device used to challenge conventions of drama and the novel. Through their late-twentieth-century texts, Susan Sontag and Marie Redonnet acknowledge their literary inheritance as they extend the boundaries of literature's domain. This dissertation provides a definition and several examples of an intertextual mechanism I call a janus allusion. The janus allusion can be read as a sign pointing to acts of borrowing from diverse media, such as silent films, literary texts, and historical documents, crucial to the construction of the alluding work itself. I identify this type of allusion, capable of simultaneously echoing two independent extratextual works or sets of works, within novels and plays by an American writer, Sontag, and a French author, Redonnet. My comparative analysis reveals that, as the janus allusion simultaneously evokes diverse texts, the intertextual device draws attention to the alluding work as a compound-media text.; In Susan Sontag's case, the janus allusion highlights the composite nature of her central characters and the process of these figures' creation. In Sontag's play, Alice in Bed, and in her novel, The Volcano Lover: A Romance, aspects of two extratextual figures combine to form one main character. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy, embodied by the janus allusion, points to one of the central concerns Sontag explores within Alice in Bed and The Volcano Lover : the relationship between fact and fiction. My investigation of Sontag's janus allusions facilitates a discussion of Redonnet's more sophisticated use of the same device. In Marie Redonnet's novel, Rose Melie Rose, and in her drama, Mobie-Diq, the intertextual mechanism draws attention to Redonnet's attempts to merge early silent film with literature. Her central janus allusions thus simultaneously echo literary and filmic sources. The compound nature of the allusion reveals the innovative incorporation of diverse media into Redonnet's writing and enables a reader to gain insight into her efforts to forge new literary forms.