Intertextuality and Platonic Eros: A Metafictional Study of Plato’s Symposium and Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Abstract

The present research focuses on the theme of love, its importance and application through intertextuality in postmodern fiction under textual analysis of Plato’s Symposium and Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. The authors may use, consciously or unconsciously, the intertextual links among various sources of texts to present a newfangled version of historical events. The objectives of such intertetxuality may include reinterpretation, appreciation and criticism of the undertaken subject. This approach of revisiting the history and marking ties with preceded happening(s) to formulate an up-to-date version lies in the archetype of postmodern perspective. The researcher aims at exploring how Milan Kundera has made effective use of intertextuality and redefined love in postmodern paradigm. Further, this is to reconnoiter how Julia Kristeva’s model of intertextuality can play an effective role in forming connections among hypertexts and hypotexts. The main stance is that the authors have been re-writing the same stories over and over again by employing text(s) within their own dense web of discourse. Furthermore, the future researchers can use Kristeva’s model to trace the intertextual connections among texts to denote their influence and inspiration for their contemporary value.