Intertextuality in L. P.!Hartley's The 'Go-Between' and Ian!McEwan's 'Atonement'

This essay attempts to read Hartley’s The Go-Between (1953) and McEwan’s Atonement (2001) within a web of textuality which includes D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) as well as Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, and perhaps other texts yet to appear. Its aim is to subvert the older notion of “influence” study in which the later work often bore the stigma of being “derivative”. It supports the contemporary notion that each text operates under the principle of the déjà lu, the “already read”, and perhaps the yet-to-be-read as well. Rejecting the single direction of traditional “influence” study, the essay also explores the ways in which a work such as Atonement “influences” The Go-Between, and both works “influence” Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which preceded them. © 2003 Forum for Modern Language Studies.