Intertextuality: Books Referenced Within Fun Home

Alison Bechdel utilizes intertextuality when she references other works in her own book. This lists shows how deeply literature and text-based works influenced her own life, her father’s life, and her relationship with her father. Why would she be so meticulous and specific about these books as she chronicles her story?

Why is it important that she depicts some works only through image, and discusses others more thoroughly in words?

Chapter 1: The Role of the Reader- Umberto Eco (74) Anna Karenina- Tolstoy (3) The Scarsdale Diet (74) The Nude- Kenneth Clark (15) Sophie’s Choice- Styron (74) The Stones of Venice- Ruskin (19) Word is Out (75) Just So Stories (21) Lesbian/Woman (75) Chapter 2: The Well of Loneliness- Hall (75) A Happy Death- Albert Camus (27) The Unlit Lamp (75) The Addams Family (34) The Peaceable Kingdom-Lettarlog The Myth of Sisyphus (47) (75)

Chapter 3: Charity Girl- Heyer (75) The Dictionary (57) Frederica- Heyer (75)

Theory of Film (58) Goodbye Mr. Chips- Hilton (75) Plato (58) Our Right to Love (75)

The Second Sex (58) Homosexualities-Masters & Johnson Sappho Was A Right-On Woman (59) (75) The Sun Also Rises (61) Delta of Venus- Anais Nin (76)

The Great Gatsby (61) Out of the Closets & Into the Streets (76) The Far Side of Paradise: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (62) Maurice- Forster (76)

The Taming of the Shrew- The Gay Report (76) Shakespeare (69) The Front Runner (76) La Bastarde (76) The Works of Oscar Wilde (154)

Our Bodies Our Selves (76) The Importance of being Ernest (154) Roget’s Thesaurus (77) The Waterfall- Marge Drabble (185)

Dream of a Common Language- Chapter 7: Adrienne Rich (80) The Lord of the Rings –J R Tolkien Beginning with O- Olga Broumas (80) (198) Gyn Ecology – Mary Daly (80) Pride and Prejudice – (199)

The World of Pooh (80) The Odyssey – Homer (203) James and the Giant Peach (81) Dubliners –James Joyce (204)

“Sunday Morning” –Wallace Stevens Ulysses –James Joyce (204) (82) Earthly Paradise –Colette (205) Zelda- Nancy Milford (84) Lesbian/Woman (205) Chapter 4: Orlando –Virginia Woolf (205) Women in the Shadows (107) Rubyfruit Jungle (205) The Worm Ouroboros- Eddison (116) Desert of the Heart –Rule (205) Volume 2: The Guermantes Way- Marcel Proust (119) Cecil Beaton’s Diaries (205) Chapter 5: The Homosexual Matrix – C. A. Tripp (205) The American Dream- Albee (131) Lesbian Nation- Jill Johnston (207) Mornings at Seven- Paul Osborng (132) Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing –May Sarton (207) Baby and Childcare- Dr. Benjamin Spock (138) The Letters of Virginia Woolf (209) Chapter 6: Flying –Kate Millett (217)