Intertextuality in the Fantasy Literature

Image Appropriations Between King And Tolkien

Abstract

The work analyzes the processes of intertextuality in contemporary fantastic literature, based on a case study between the seven volumes of Stephen King's The Dark Tower and the South African writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It discusses how intersemiosis processes and imagery appropriations are established between the authors focusing on some similarities in plot and characterization of space and characters. It questions the hybridization in the constitution of the genre and the (re) constructions of mediation between Fantasy and Terror in the appropriations of the mythological plot of the environment (The Mid-World \ Middle-Heart), the signs of power and their representations of villainy (The Black Towers) \ Mordor) and the personality structures and borderline environment of the characters (Absent King \ Red King; the gunslinger \ wanderer; the child \ Hobbits; the Crimson King \ Eye of Sauron; Palantiri \ Orbes; Society \ Ka-tet). We propose an inference on the limits of the literary identity of these nationalized products in the intertextuality processes, discussing where are the spaces of mimesis and (re) creation in these literary genres.