Poësieteks en Bybelse interteks

Abstract

lntertextuality is a many-faceted pheno enon which has already been treated in diverse ways. When two highly complicated an polisemantic text types like the Bible and a poem interact creatively, meaning allocation is also complicated. The creative transposition of a signifier or a text element from one text system into another creates diverse possibilities for decoding the signified. The generating text system can have a varying influence on meaning production. The relation between the source text and the receptive text is a meaning \... producing factor which must be considered. In such a dynamic language situation the reader has to find strategies to guide and realise meaning encoded in the text. The meaning producing interaction between two text types firstly needs insight into the functioning of the different text systems. The Bible is a highly complicated text type because it is a synthesis of many different text types. This multiplies reception possibilities. In this the contribution of the author's reception of the source text to the way in which meaning in the receptive text is produced, is investigated. With this in mind a communication model is reconstructed to handle the Bible as a unity with distinctive signification conventions. This model serves as a point of departure to identify different receptions of the text. By using this model as starting point, the function of the generating text as meaning producing element is traced. Through this strategy the reader can decide in which way the text system of the source text as a meaning producer must be activated. Alternatively a different reference frame must be realized for the Biblical signifiers. In the latter case the conventions of the poem as well as the encoded code systems are mainly used as semantic directives. The complexity of factors which generate the meaning production of a Biblical intertext in a poetic text is investigated to indicate that self-evident suppositions cannot be made about the signified. The transposed texteme does not necessarily maintain the referential framework

referential pattern of the source text. Signification may therefore differ. Different considerations which can activate the use and development of Biblical signifiers in a poem are investigated. Such considerations may be exclusively of an artistic source or it can be stimulated by the signification of the Bible as a religious document. The previous two possibilities can also interact. Another possibility is that the signification of the source text can be polemised and opposed as a contra system. The influence of this treatment of the generating text on the transposition of its signifiers is another one of the meaning producing factors which are considered in this investigation. The functioning of these many textual strategies leaves the investigator with no other choice than to follow an eclectic and interdisciplinary approach. For the same reason recent literary terminology is innovatively developed and adapted to comparable phenomena. While it leaves room for creative reading it also enlarges the possibility that some aspect may have been treated scientifically inadequately. For this reason the present study is considered as a discursive contribution from a specific (limited) theoretic orientation.