ИСТИНА

The paper explores the possibility of using intertextuality of literary texts as a marker of individual style. As Allen notes, ‘the text is ... a compilation of cultural textuality. Individual text and the cultural text are made from the same textual material and cannot be separated’ (Allen, 2000, p. 30). The specific points of contact of the text of a literary work and its context, understood in a broad sense as a socio-cultural semiotic system, are represented by allusions, i.e. direct or passing reference to some historical event or person, social or political incident, geographical place, artistic work, etc. The understanding of these allusions depends on the reader’s background knowledge. As Shaar remarked (Shaar, 1989, p. 153) on their use, ‘from the point of view of style ... the poetic discourse increases in density and becomes more forcible’. Thus, analysing the scope and diversity of referents of these allusions, understood in the sense that Shaar called ‘vertical context’, the relative density of their use in a text, as well as the specific form of their phrasing, we could draw a map of intertextual referents. Comparing such maps of different literary works, stylisticians get a new dimension in the search for understanding ‘the occasional linguistic idiosyncrasies which characterizes an individual’s uniqueness’ (Crystal and Derek, 1969, p. 9). Such an approach, though not without its limitations, might provide a more objective measurement and more tangible technique of stylistic analysis, which is important it stylistics (Leech and Short, 2007, pp. 34–38). Keywords: intertextuality, vertical context, allusions, stylistics, individual style, maps of intertextual referents References Allen, G., Intertextuality, London, Routledge, 2000. Crystal, D. and D. Derek, Investigating English Style, Harlow, Longman, 1969. Leech, G. and M. Short, Style in Fiction, 2nd ed., London, Longman, 2007. Shaar, Cl. ‘Inscriptions in Paradise Lost: five variants of a vertical context system’, in L. Hickey (ed.), The Pragmatics of Style, London, Routledge, 1989.