Intertextuality in Bradbury’s “Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s Is a Friend of Mine”: Is intertextuality contributing to the construction of meaning or resisting it?

Abstract

Intertextuality—the property by which multiple texts interact within a single text—may be perceived as recalcitrance (a disruptive force resisting meaning construction) in Ray Bradbury’s short story “Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s Is a Friend of Mine.” Since the short story possesses multiple instances in which the text interacts with works by Charles Dickens, biblical stories, and references to works by other authors, a number of readers might become confused or they may feel unable to understand Bradbury’s short story. Equalizing intertextuality to recalcitrance, however, is the result of viewing the story’s intertextuality from a rather superficial angle. In reality, the interaction of multiple texts in the short story not only enables meaning production but it also enhances it by establishing parallelisms, recalling past events, and influencing the reader’s perception of the atmosphere in Bradbury’s work.