Allusion, Reference, and Echo

Three related moves

Lesson 1 introduced intertextuality as a broad principle. This lesson zooms in on its most common small-scale forms: allusion, direct reference/quotation, and echo. They differ mainly in explicitness. A direct quotation reproduces another text's exact words; an allusion gestures toward another text without quoting it; an echo is the faintest of the three, a resemblance the reader may only half-register. Knowing the differences lets you describe intertextual effects with precision instead of lumping everything together as "a reference."

Allusion

An allusion is a brief, indirect invocation of a text, person, place, event, or work of art that the audience is expected to recognize. Its power lies in economy: with a single word or image, a writer imports a whole cluster of a