Metatextuality vs. Intertextuality — What's the Difference?

Metatextuality is a form of intertextual discourse in which one text makes critical commentary on itself or another text. This concept is related to Gérard Genette's concept of transtextuality in which a text changes or expands on the content of another text.

Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, or by interconnections between similar or related works perceived by an audience or reader of the text. These references are sometimes made deliberately and depend on a reader's prior knowledge and understanding of the referent, but the effect of intertextuality is not always intentional and is sometimes inadvertent.

A form of intertextual discourse in which one text makes critical commentary on another.

Relating to or deriving meaning from the interdependent ways in which texts stand in relation to each other.

The idea that a given text is a response to what has already been written, be it explicit or implicit.

The reference to another separate and distinct text within a text.