Michael Riffaterre, a French-American scholar, is a literary theorist of the structuralist period, situated at the intersection of Anglo-American New Criticism and the French poetic tradition. He theorized personal emotions, linguistic sensitivity, and literary passion, establishing a poetics of semiotics—a highly theorized practice of literary reading. This article aims to explore the unique definition and central role of the concept of intertextuality in Riffaterre's reading theory.

Intertextuality-Centered Poetic Semiotics: Fundamental Positions and Concepts

Riffaterre's research shifted from stylistics based on structural linguistic methods to poetic semiotics, emphasizing the reader's importance in literary interpretation and linking literary meaning to the reading process. He viewed literary communication as a special form where the author and the real world are absent, leaving only the text and the reader. Riffaterre argued that the text imposes constraints and guidance on the reader, stressing that the reader's interpretation is bound by textual encoding. Gradually, he introduced the concept of intertextuality as an internal decoding mechanism of the text, publishing multiple related papers between 1979 and 1983 to establish a comprehensive theory of intertextuality. Riffaterre regarded intertextuality as a mechanism unique to literary reading, asserting that it generates significance, whereas linear reading produces meaning. He distinguished between the mimetic and semiotic aspects of literary language, as well as meaning and significance, proposing a dual reading model: linear reading and literary reading. Literary reading requires the reader to interpret the current text in light of other texts, a method termed interpretive reading or retrospective reading. Riffaterre's theoretical framework aims to describe the semantic indirectness of poetic language from a semiotic perspective, constructing a universal model of literary meaning production.

The Mechanism of Intertextuality in the Semiotic Process: How the Matrix Generates Text

This section delves into the central role of intertextuality in Riffaterre's poetic semiotics, identifying it as the criterion distinguishing literary from non-literary reading and a key mechanism in the semiotic process. Riffaterre's theoretical hypothesis posits that poetry results from the expansion of a matrix—a deep semantic structure or core theme of the text. The transformation from matrix to concrete poetry involves subtextual derivation, expansion, and conversion, reflecting the "hyperdetermination" of poetic texts. Riffaterre emphasized that the concept of poeticity is inseparable from that of the text, with the reader's perception of poeticity grounded in words' referentiality to the text. The generation of text from the matrix is, in essence, literary reading itself—a process in which the reader participates in text production and uncovers the text's implicit semantic structure. Through intertextual reading of literary texts, Riffaterre discovered and named hidden matrices within them. He equated literariness with intertextuality, calling poetic semiotics "intertextual semiotics" and highlighting the pivotal role of intertextuality in the semiotic process. Riffaterre's concept of intertextuality aligns more closely with Greimas's semiotic definition, where intertextuality entails the construction, replication, or transformation of implicit models.

Triggering Intertextual Reading: Intertextual Traces Manifested as Ungrammaticality

Riffaterre's intertextuality mechanism in literary reading underscores the reader's active role in the process, treating intertextuality as a semiotic process—text production rather than the product of authorial intent. He distinguished between "compulsory intertextuality" and Barthes's "random intertextuality," arguing that intertextuality should guide the reader's decoding from within the text. To pinpoint the trigger for the reader's perception of intertextuality, Riffaterre introduced the concepts of "intertextual traces" and "ungrammaticality," which initiate the intertextual reading mechanism. Intertextual traces are linguistic fragments directly encountered on the textual surface, manifesting as ungrammaticality—textual anomalies that violate linguistic norms or clash with the context. This intuition prompts the reader to suspend linear reading and search literary memory for potential intertexts, shifting from mimetic to intertextual reading. Through analyses of Derrida's Glas and Mallarmé's poetry, Riffaterre demonstrated how intertextual traces presuppose intertexts, revealing deep semantic isomorphisms. His intertextual reading method aims to transform ungrammaticality at the mimetic level into grammaticality at the semiotic level, ultimately reaching the semantic matrix and uncovering the poem's true significance.

The "Third Text" in Literary Reading: Interpretant and the Intertextual Triangle

This section explores the concept of the "third text" in literary reading—the "interpretant," a core term in Riffaterre's poetic semiotics. Derived from Peirce's semiotic theory, Riffaterre applied the interpretant to literary intertextuality, constructing an intertextual triangle comprising the text (T), the intertext (T'), and the second intertext (I). In this model, the text corresponds to the sign, the intertext to the object, and the interpretant (I) serves as the mediating "third text" connecting them. The interpretant not only guides the final significance of the literary text but also prevents mere repetition of the intertext, endowing the text with new meaning through its mediating role and ensuring literary uniqueness. Riffaterre's intertextual reading theory combines structuralist literary criticism and reader-response criticism, providing analytical tools to reveal how texts construct meaning networks through code rules and the reader's literary memory. His theory highlights the hyperdetermination within literary texts, contrasting with the theories of Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva. Riffaterre's framework also addresses the balance between text-centered and reader-centered approaches, the assessment of readerly competence, the universality of poetic semiotics, the impact of the intertextual triangle on meaning stability and fluidity, the relationship between sociohistorical dimensions and literary memory, and a comparison between literary intertextual reading mechanisms and hypertext links in digital networks or AI-driven literary database retrieval systems.