Romantasy as an intertextual genre: responses of and to Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses

This article analyzes intertextuality within the genre of romantasy, as well as what I call a romantasy chain reaction (the influence of one title on subsequent ones), initiated by Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series. After exploring the theoretical aspects of intertextuality, the paper examines this phenomenon in practice on the example of the abovementioned series. The analysis discusses the responses of A Court of Thorns and Roses to the cultural world, but also the responses of other romantasy works (namely Rhapsodic, Quicksilver, Fourth Wing, and When the Moon Hatched, Crescent City, as well as A Song of the Forever Rains) to those books, henceforth creating the aforementioned intertextual chain reaction.