On The Intertextuality Within Coetzee’s Autobiographical Trilogy

John Maxwell Coetzee was born in a Dutch white family from Cape Town in South Africa. He grew up in the period when apartheid was very serious in South Africa. In his boyhood, the violent confrontations due to the racial tensions happened every day and became daily experience. Under such a kind of complex environment in South Africa, as a man who had Afrikaans blood and was educated by English model, Coetzee experienced a lot of annoyance in the course of growing up. In Coetzee’s boyhood period, he was incompatible with others. He suffered from the painful experience of marginalization in the society prematurely. He decided to leave South Africa to find his identity in England, but could not find his identity there, either. Greatly disappointed, he left England for America, but because of his strong opposition to Vietnam War, he had to leave America and return South Africa. John Maxwell Coetzee wrote Boyhood, Youth and Summertime as his autobiographical trilogy to tell his own experience of identity pursuit. These three novels represent Coetzee’s African boyhood life, his life in England and also part of his middle-age life.Intertextuality as an important criticism concept was put forward by Julia Kristeva,a French woman literary critic and theorist in 1960 s. Then it quickly became an iconic term in post structuralist theory and post-modern theory. Intertextuality is usually used to indicate the intertextual relationship in two or more than two texts. Intertextuality also exits in Coetzee’s autobiographical trilogy, even within the three components of the trilogy.The thesis is made up of three parts, introduction, main body and conclusion. In the part of conclusion a brief introduction is given to Coetzee’s life and his writing career, the main contents of his autobiographical trilogy, review of the study of Cocetzee’s works both at home and abroad, especially the study of his autobiographical trilogy. The main body consists of three chapters which study the intertextual relationship between the three novels of Coetzee’s autobiographical trilogy. It is found that intertextuality within the three works exists in characters, likes and themes, through which the three novels are linked to one another, making them form an organic whole. As far as intertextuality in characters is concerned, the protagonist John and his parents serve as intertexts to connect the three novels of the trilogy, and John’s cousin serves as an intertext to connect Boyhood and Summertime. In terms of intertextuality in likes, John’s farm attachment serves as an intertext to join Boyhood and Summertime, while his obsession with cricket is an intertext to connect all the three novels. Intertetuality also exists in themes. Identity confusion serves as an intertext to connect all the three novels, while women’s struggle for freedom and equality with men as an intertext gets Boyhood and Summertime connected. The conclusion is the summary of the thesis, and in this part the author of the thesis points out the significance and value of the study of intertextuality within the three novels of his autobiographical trilogy.