Intertextuality in Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home"

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Modern Literature, grade: 3,0, University of Erfurt, course: Literature in images: Graphic Novels, language: English, abstract: A lot of graphic novels work with Intertextuality, because as a visual medium they can represent or quote another text even better than a normal novel. Alison Bechdel¿s "Fun Home" is a prime example of those graphic novels that use intertextuality. Her memoir is full of pop culture and book references. My thesis is that the literary works and stories she has woven into her story mirror her own story and exist to further illustrate her struggles coming of age.

The structure of the paper is going to be the following: first comes a short introduction on Intertextuality assisted by Graham Allen¿s "Introduction to Intertextuality" and Roland Barthes¿ "Death of the Author". The next part, which is going to be the main part, focuses of course on Intertextuality in "Fun Home". Starting off, the first subchapter is going to be about the repeated usage of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus as a display of the relationship between Alison and her father Bruce Bechdel. I would like to search for the connection between this analogy, especially how it was used and why.