Intertexts of 'Capricornia'

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the many illuminating literary as well as film intertexts of Xavier Herbert's "vast" 1938 novel 'Capricornia', looking backwards and forwards in time. It considers both "vertical" and "horizontal" types of intertextuality. Thus, some relationships begin with reference to another literary text ("horizontal"), while others work across modes, from novel to film or vice versa ("vertical"). Locating the novel in terms of a global system of intertexts, the chapter offers a balance to readings that attempt to objectify and limit the novel's "reality," especially by narrowly nation-focused explanations. The effect is expansive, moving between conventional literary codes of meaning and into mythic, cartographic and astrological realms of apprehension. What emerges is a text just as impure as the novel's own social idealism - a creole text to embody the Creole Nation.