Zadie Smiths On Beauty

Dr. Derrick Higginbotham

October 15, 2012
English 1016

Intertextuality: the shaping of a texts meaning by other texts, and these other texts
need not be literary. Literally, it can be the use of other, earlier texts as the
groundwork for a new literary creation.
A scene from Kiki and Howards anniversary party in section 1, chapter 11: Kipps and Belsey
So we did some half-assed research and it turns out that thirty years is pearl, but, as you know, the
average grad income doesnt really stretch that far, so we werent really in the pearl way of things
Meredith laughed maniacally. And then Chris thought of this poem and then I like did my arts
and craft thing and anyway here it is: see its like a framed, fabricy, type poem thingI dont know.
Kiki felt the warm teak frame delivered into her hands and admire the crushed rose petals and broken
shells under the glass. The text was sewn in, like a tapestry. It was the most unusual present she
could have expected from these two. It was lovely.
Full fathom five they father lies; Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes
read Kiki circumspectly, aware that she should know it.
So, thats the pearl thing, said Meredith. Its probably stupid.
Ohits so gorgeous, said Kiki, skim-reading the rest to herself in a quick whisper. Is it Plath? Thats
wrong, isnt it?
Its Shakespeare, said Christian, wincing slightly. The Tempest. Nothing of him that doth fade, But
doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange. Plath stripped it for parts.
Shit, Kiki laughed. When in doubt, say Shakespeare. And when its sport, say Michael Jordan.

On Beauty as a textual hybrid:

It creates a fusion between the story that Zadie Smith

wishes to tell and Forsters Howards End.
Such a use of intertextuality by Smith raises questions
like:

How does intertextuality construct audiences? In

other words, does an audience need to have read
Forsters novel to make meaning of Smiths book?
How does knowledge of On Beautys reliance on
Howards End affect your reading, if it does so at all?

Rembrandts Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1658)

Rembrandts etching Woman on a Mound, c. 1631

Chapter 10 of part II, The Anatomy Lesson:

When Katie Armstrong reflect on this painting, she thinks:

Is she [the woman in the painting] so grotesque? She was a shock
to Katie, at firstlike a starkly lit, unforgiving photograph of oneself.
But then Katie began to notice all the exterior, human information,
not explicitly in the frame but implied by what we see there. Kate is
moved by the crenulated marks of absent stockings on her legs the
muscles in her arms suggestive of manual labour. That loose belly
that has known many babies, that still fresh face that has lured men
in the past and may yet lure more. Katiea stringbean,
physicallycan even see her own body contained in this body, as if
Rembrandt were saying to her, and to all woman: For you are of
the earth, as my nude is, and you will come to this point too, and be
blessed if you feel as little shame, as much joy, as she! This is what
a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and
experiencethese are the marks of living. So Katie feels.

Ekphrasis:
is a graphic and often extended description of a
work of visual art in a literary text.
In classical rhetoric, this device slowed the ductus,
or flow, of the text, forcing the reader to stop and
meditate on a single set of images; it was meant
to inspire deep thought about what was
represented and connect it back to themes in the
work as a whole.
Famous examples: the images on Achilleus shield
in Homers The Iliad; Keats poem Ode to a
Grecian Urn.

Rembrandts Flora (1635)

Rembrandts The Prodigal Son in the Tavern (1635)

Rembrandts Bellona (1633):

Creolization refers to unpredictable combinations of the Old World and New World
cultures, the past and present, the traditional and new, in order to create unique
identities.

This term points to a theory of identity, one often specific to the

African diasporathose African peoples forcibly transported to
Britain, the US, and Caribbean as part of the slave trade and their
descendents.
Creolization resists notions of race that stress purity, whether the
purity of blackness, whiteness, or any other ethnic category, and it
highlights that people construct their racial identity in numerous,
and usually unpredictable, ways.
Rembrandts paintings creolize identity since they blend the past
and the present, the old and the new in unusual ways.

Smiths interest in representing a mixed race coupleKiki and

Howard Belseyand their racially mixed childrenJerome, Zora,
and Levipoints to her interest in the consequences of creolization.