“I am the sole author”: inauthenticity and Intertextuality in Zadie Smith’s NW

This article examines the role of intertextuality in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) and the novel’s questioning of authorship, authenticity and identity. Relying on intertextual and postcolonial theories, the article lays bare how Smith’s novel questions the fixity and stability of selves and how she situa...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Pérez Zapata, Beatriz
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:20.500.12367/2494
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12367/2494
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Intertextuality
Authenticity
Authorship
Postcolonialism
Zadie Smith
Descripción
Sumario:This article examines the role of intertextuality in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) and the novel’s questioning of authorship, authenticity and identity. Relying on intertextual and postcolonial theories, the article lays bare how Smith’s novel questions the fixity and stability of selves and how she situates herself as an inherently intertextual author disrupted by others and potentially disruptive of (post)colonial ways of being and one that plays with notions of (in)authenticity and originality. For this purpose, the article pays attention to the novel’s intertextual links with the historical case of the Tichborne claimant and Jorge Luis Borges’s fictionalisation of it in the short story “Tom Castro, the Implausible Impostor,” included in the collection A Universal History of Infamy (1933). [...]