Intertextual

Intertextual refers to the ways a text engages with other texts by echoing language, reusing images, adapting stories, or responding to earlier ideas. Some intertextual connections are clearly directed by an author who expects readers to recognize them. Others emerge through the reader’s knowledge and interpretive choices, even when no direct reference is stated. Intertextuality highlights that meaning is shaped both by how texts are written and by how they are read. In literary and religious studies, the term draws attention to networks of texts in which meaning develops through reuse, dialogue, and reinterpretation rather than isolation.