Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - Zsolt K. Virágos: The Twilight Zone of Myth-and-Literature Studies: Analogy, Anomaly, and Intertextuality
the same cluster of networking. To see how these latent correspondences are triggered to generate linkage and added meaning, it is necessary to realize that these transactions operate within a structural scheme, which I will call triangulation and which will be used here to describe a special relationship between two given intertexts as fixed points connected to the cultural consumer (reader, critic, interpreter, etc.) who actually generates the interlink. Indeed, without the human subject as a perceiving and connecting agent, interlinks are merely latent and dormant possibilities. Which also means that in these transactions the "anxiety of influence" ä la Harold Bloom is a perennial factor implicating both author and myth critic, also involving —less directly — the reader. In its larger ramifications of historicity, the very understanding of the myth-and-literature dynamic, which operates within a special process of give-and-take, that is, through the dialectic of continuities and disruptions, is inconceivable outside the intertextual dialogue of texts. Again, in a looser sense, the very idea of how tradition—including the legacy of myth —coalesces and is maintained is fundamentally intertextual. The demonstration of how the lineage of a given corpus is established, how potential "fathering texts" can be located, and how, in establishing a context or frame of possible linkage, the binding element can be found in structural conventions, culturally related patterns of conduct, or some other constructs of cultural continuity would be the logical extension of the present inquiry. Owing to limitations of space, however, this demonstration will not be elaborated here. Suffice it to say that between two artifacts —thus between texts of ancient myth and subsequent literary works —almost anything can trigger intertextual linkage: a structural device, a plot segment, a literary figure, a character trait, a narrative element, a stylistic feature, a cliché. This last element, the cliché , is an especially potent generator of resemblances, particularly if the concept is meant in a structural or thematic sense. Cliché can thus be a synonym for a formal-thematic device of almost any order of magnitude, or it can simply stand for a platitude, a thematic concept, an instance of objectified ethos, a commonplace idea, a simple truth, a fact of life. Emily Dickinson, for instance, wrote 1775 poems, while refreshing a mere handful of conventional thematic clichés. 282
