Room for Manoeuvre The Role of Intertext in Elfriede Jelinek's 'Die Klavierspielerin', Gunter Grass's 'Ein weites Feld', and Herta Muller's 'Niederungen' and 'Reisende a

This study of four literary texts, all very distinct in form and method, analyzes the dynamic relationship between reader, text, and intertext, and suggests that it is in the effectiveness of this manoeuvring, by and of the reader, that the intertextual narrative can be shown to find its force. In Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin, the pornographic, psychoanalytic, and musical intertexts form a discursive nexus of effects, central to the construction of a highly ironic narrative voice that unsettles and energizes the reader into critical response. The intertextual game of Ein weites Feld creates a text that is structurally and thematically 'out of control', thus bringing the reader into confrontation with the celebratory discourses of German reunification. Herta Muller's depiction of the village idyll in Niederungen embraces and disrupts the Heimat genre. The quotational mode, and our discomfort in responding to it, allows for the critical articulation of questions of authority and control with which the stories are concerned, while Muller's use of a Calvino intertext in Reisende auf einem Bein is fundamental in the development of a central character whose elusive quality reflects on thematic issues addressed by the text.Symons, Morwenna is the author of 'Room for Manoeuvre The Role of Intertext in Elfriede Jelinek's 'Die Klavierspielerin', Gunter Grass's 'Ein weites Feld', and Herta Muller's 'Niederungen' and 'Reisende a', published 2005 under ISBN 9781904350439 and ISBN 1904350437.