Baština (Jan 2017)

The phenomenon of citation and other forms of intertextuality in the novels of Danilo Nikolić

  • Bulajić Jelena D.

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2017, no. 43
pp. 63 – 81

Abstract

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In this work we examined the phenomenon of citation and other forms of intertextuality in the novels of Danilo Nikolić. The research has shown that this contemporary Serbian writer consistently achieves intertextual relationships in his works, in various ways, which makes the process prominent in the poetics of his novels. We noticed that the phenomenon of citation is not equally characteristic of all the novels the writer wrote, but is especially emphasized in the first three novels (The Owners of Former Happiness, The Queen of Fun and The Ending in Grgeteg) because in these novels, the citations are separated from the main text, in both graphical and spatial sense, while in other novels they are represented to a lesser degree and are mainly located within the primary text. Considering the type of subtext which they were taken from, we concluded that the interliterary quotations have been inserted into the structure of Nikolić's novels, as well as self-citations and non-aesthetic quotations. Apart from the quotations, we also encountered other forms of intertextual relations in the novels of Danilo Nikolić, in which we did not see any matching, that is to say equivalence between his own and other texts, and the intertextual contact is achieved in other ways. That led to us discovering the allusion, reminiscence, the comment and the paraphrase of someone else's text. The analysis has shown that these forms of intertextuality largely appear in two latest novels this author wrote, The Corrector and The List of the Future Deceased, while they only scarcely appear within several of his other novels. Based on the given results, we could conclude that Danilo Nikolić, in his novels, accomplishes the dialogue with foreign texts in a creative way, because through the given communication, he manages to achieve authentic literary artistic structures.

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