Intertextuality is the fact that there is only one story. It is all connected and nothing is ever 100% original. Foster explains it as the older and newer texts are having a dialogue (page 29). Intertextuality draws on he concept, rhetoric, and/or ideology from other texts and uses them in new ones.

Lord of the Flies is a good example of intertextuality. William Golding gets his story from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Golding’s use of certain concepts from Stevenson’s novel show a “dialogue between old texts and new” (page 29).

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has intertextuality with J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Both have an aging wizard mentor and a group of friends is formed to assist the protagonist on their quest. Though this link is not vital to understanding the Harry Potter novels, it is still likely that Rowling was influenced by Tolkien’s iconic work.

Another example of “dialogue between old texts and new” would be West Side Story. It is basically a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. It is just set in a different time and place with different names for characters. Arthur Laurents used William Shakespeare’s story and created a popular Broadway musical.

An archetype is a “pattern” (page 198). It can be anything that keeps reappearing in text over and over again so often that we recognize them whenever we are reading.

Intertextuality and archetypes support the statement: “There’s only one story.” This is because it is all connected. Literature is never completely original. Writers draw from the work of others in an effort to create something “new.” They use archetypes that give readers a moment of recognition whenever they see them. Everything is just reused in a slightly different way to make it all seem brand new.