Reading The French Lieutenant's Woman In The Light Of Intertextuality

John Fowles is regarded as a successful English novelist. His masterpiece The French Lieutenant's Woman causes a great deal of postmodern criticisms, including intertextuality.Conventional understanding of hypertext is usually from specific literary intertexts (hypotexts), but the non-literary intertexts are ignored. This thesis attempts to study from the perspective of non-literary intertexts and literary intertexts through tracing of the origin them, to analyze the novel under the devices of intertextuality—collage, allusion, quotation, parody, and pastiche. Intertextual reading of The French Lieutenant's Woman could help reader interpret the novel better. It constructs a great potential of rich referential relations, as well as unveil the high artistry and in-depth meaning. Thus, the intertextual reading will contribute to literary study a new respective.