Examples
The long quotation from Dante's Inferno that prefaces T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is part of a speech by one of the damned in Dante's Hell. Linking it to the monologue which forms Eliot's poem adds a comment and a dimension to Prufrock's confession. The epigraph to Eliot's Gerontion is a quotation fromShakespeare's Measure for Measure.
The epigraphs to the preamble of Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual (La Vie mode d'emploi) and to the book as a whole warn the reader that tricks are going to be played and that all will not be what it seems.
The epigraph to E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime quotes Scott Joplin's instructions to those who play his music, "Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast." This stands in contrast to the accelerating pace of American society at the turn of the 20th century.
The epigraph to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is John 12:24. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
Stephen King uses many epigraphs in his writing, usually to mark the beginning of another section in the novel. An unusual example is The Stand where he uses lyrics from certain songs to express the metaphor used in a particular part.
Jack London uses epigraph in the beginning of Call of the Wild.
As an epigraph to "The Sun Also Rises,"Ernest Hemingway famously quotes Gertrude Stein, "You are all a lost generation."
It is possible to consider the title and the epigraph metatextual inclusions: they are not included into the text though considerably influence its understanding. To show their connection with the text, one should dwell upon their functioning in the novel (e.g. W.S. Maugham’s “The Painted Veil” – epigraph: “...the painted veil which those who live, call life”, P.B. Shelly. The sonnet’s first line is: “not the painted veil which those who live call life” ).
After an epigraph Maugham places the preface, which is one more kind of metatext inclusion, and also an optional one. From the point of view of the intertextuality's pragmatics the author's preface is a situation of the autho’s direct personal application to the reader. Optional as it is, the author's preface becomes an especially informative kind of direct literary communications.
Another kind of intertextuality is that of reminiscence. Reminiscence is defined as the reproduction of familiar phrasal, imagery, or rhythmical syntactical structure from a different text. E.g. in W.S. Maugham’s “The Painted Veil” the dying husband sums his tragedy by words “The dog it was that died”. The friend of the late explains to the widow that the citation is taken from “Elegies on the Death of a rabid Dog” by Goldsmith. In an elegy rabid dog had bitten the person, but the man recovered, and the dog had died. The bitter irony of the character is clearly seen through this tale.
An allusion is a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication. M.H. Abrams defined allusion as “a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary work or passage”. It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection (Fowler); an overt allusion is a misnomer for what is simply a reference.
An allusion is a literary device that stimulates ideas, associations, and extra information in the reader's mind with only a word or two. Allusion means ‘reference’. It relies on the reader being able to understand the allusion and being familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words.
Allusions in writing help the reader to visualize what's happening by evoking a mental picture. But the reader must be aware of the allusion and must be familiar with what it alludes to.
Here’s an example: