Connections and comparisons between texts practice questions.

The 'star-crossed lovers' plot recurs from Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story to countless modern films. Which term best describes this relationship between the later works and Shakespeare's play?

• A meaningless coincidence that carries no interpretive value at all
• Plagiarism of Shakespeare's dialogue
• A paratextual feature of the play
• An intertextual reworking of a canonical love-tragedy plot

Answer: An intertextual reworking of a canonical love-tragedy plot

Later texts consciously rework the plot pattern of a canonical source; recognising the connection enriches interpretation, which is precisely what intertextuality describes.

T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land weaves fragments of Dante, Shakespeare and Hindu scripture into a poem about the modern world. What is the chief interpretive effect of this technique?

• It layers older voices into the present, inviting readers to measure the modern world against earlier texts
• It supposedly proves that the poet was completely unable to invent any original poetic lines and had to borrow them all
• It restricts the poem to readers who know Italian
• It turns the poem into a legal anthology of sources

Answer: It layers older voices into the present, inviting readers to measure the modern world against earlier texts

Collaging earlier texts creates a dialogue between past and present: the fragments carry their original contexts with them, so the modern material is read against them.

In Gérard Genette's terminology, what is the relationship of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which retells the earlier novel's backstory?

• Jane Eyre is the hypertext that transforms Rhys's novel
• Jane Eyre is a paratext surrounding Rhys's novel
• Jane Eyre is the hypotext that Rhys's novel transforms
• Jane Eyre is an epigraph to Rhys's novel

Answer: Jane Eyre is the hypotext that Rhys's novel transforms

For Genette the earlier, source text is the hypotext; the later text that transforms it (here Wide Sargasso Sea) is the hypertext.

A young-adult novel transplants the plot and character dynamics of Pride and Prejudice into a present-day high school. Which term best describes this reworking?

• A translation of Austen's novel
• An appropriation that recontextualises the source text in a new setting for a new audience
• A mocking parody written specifically to ridicule and exaggerate Austen's distinctive prose style
• A first edition of the original text

Answer: An appropriation that recontextualises the source text in a new setting for a new audience

Appropriation takes over a source text's material and resituates it in a new context; the aim here is recontextualisation for new readers, not mockery of the original style.

What is the primary function of an epigraph placed at the start of a novel or chapter?

• To conveniently summarise the entire plot in advance for busy, impatient readers
• To acknowledge copyright of quoted material
• To replace the need for a chapter title
• To frame the text's themes and open a dialogue with another text or voice

Answer: To frame the text's themes and open a dialogue with another text or voice

An epigraph is a deliberate intertextual signal: it primes the reader's expectations and invites the coming text to be read alongside the quoted voice.

In an essay comparing two literary works, which basis of comparison is most likely to produce meaningful analysis?

• The two works happen to contain a very similar total number of chapters, pages and paragraphs overall
• Both works appear on the same course reading list
• Both works explore surveillance but position the reader differently through narrative perspective
• Both works were printed by the same publisher

Answer: Both works explore surveillance but position the reader differently through narrative perspective

A productive comparison links a shared concern (surveillance) to a point of contrast in technique (narrative perspective); superficial similarities of length or publication yield no analysis.