Parodic Intertextuality in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore

Abstract

The present thesis paper, entitled “Parodic intertextuality in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore”, analyzed the novel Kafka on the Shore in terms of parodic intertextuality. This study aimed at discovering why the novel gives its meaning only with relation to other works. Intertextuality, the idea that the meaning of a text is shaped by other texts, is one of the dominant ideas in contemporary literary studies. Parodic intertextuality regards a literary work as an open artifact holding hints of other texts, providing the reader with many fascinating ways to decipher and appreciate a work of art. Theoretically, this thesis borrowed some relevant insights from postmodern theorists like Linda Hutcheon, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Francis Lyotard to study the novel from disparate dimensions. To be precise, these theorists develop their thought on postmodern studies, which manipulates the postmodern studies as the matter of social discourse to the great extent for the acknowledged position. Here they suggest that postmodernism must be changed from a mere literary and cultural discussion into social, political, and economic practices. In the process of re-inscribing Western texts, the novel provides an alternative perspective on the issues that confront Japanese society and by extension of other Asian cultures as well. Therefore, taking all these issues in consideration, this paper has evaluated and analyzed the cultural and textual references that are prevalent in the text to exhibit the significance of intertextuality. From the analysis, it has been discovered that the novel marks its position as the self-reflexivity and paraodicintertextuality to show the current question of representation.