Literary Entropy based on Intertextuality

An enlargement of Kolmogorov-Lotman formulae

Abstract

This article seeks to extend the Kolmogorov-Lotman formulae for the entropy in literary texts, who value it based on semantic capacity and linguistic flexibility, adding a third member to the equation: intertextual referentiality, an essential literary mechanism capable of generating entropy, as long as it is predisposed by the author and detected by the reader. To develop this notion, understanding it as an informational condensation of the reference inscribed, certain intrinsic factors will be considered, as the degree of explicit-implicit transformation on the writing side, and in the receptive one, contextual interferences and reader’s hermeneutic variations, as well as their competence and supercompetence. Depending on these magnitudes, different entropic tendencies will be attained according to the approach of these values to unity or nullity, resulting in certain processes, both scriptural and hermeneutic ones.