Can you include quotes from other texts/people ect in a lit essay?

[zzzzzzzz]

I know you can do it in english, but I am just not sure if you can add quotes to support your essay outside from the text being used??? Thanx 

[EvangelionZeta]

Never - they actually advise against this in an examiners' report, I'm fairly sure.

[Nokiacharger]

I don't want to go against the great EZ, but just to elaborate.

For example,  you could say that in Freedom of the City by Brian Friel: With the statement, 'In nothing am I changed but...', Skinner allludes to the Shakespearean notion of nothingness, emphasised in King Lear's declaration, "Nothing will come of nothing." Friel, however, subverts the conventional...
This is called intertextuality and you definitely can use it according to our insight books. If they've said they personally dislike this in examiner's reports though, probably better not, you could do it in a sac though if the insight book says it's fine.

[EvangelionZeta]

I don't want to go against the great EZ, but just to elaborate.

For example,  you could say that in Freedom of the City by Brian Friel: With the statement, 'In nothing am I changed but...', Skinner allludes to the Shakespearean notion of nothingness, emphasised in King Lear's declaration, "Nothing will come of nothing." Friel, however, subverts the conventional...
This is called intertextuality and you definitely can use it according to our insight books. If they've said they personally dislike this in examiner's reports though, probably better not, you could do it in a sac though if the insight book says it's fine.

From my understanding, intertextuality is generally discouraged in the current VCAA course design, since we're working from a primarily Formalist theoretical basis (ie. the text is all that matters, and working from outside of it is actually discouraged...).  Intertextuality is part of the National Curriculum's Lit course though, probably in light of where contemporary Literary Criticism is going.  :p

[Menang]

Yeah, I've heard the same.

My lit teacher (who I would literally trust with my entire academic life) tells us to play 'death of the author' and generally discourages (most, if not all) intertextuality.

The pragmatic way to see it: You get marks for what you write about the passages in the exam. You get marks for how you link that to a meaning of the set text in a holistic way. You don't get marks for other content, as far as I know. You have an hour to write as much about the set passages and your text. Why waste time and words on things that won't get you marks?

[seanmw]

I would advise you don't include extraneous biographical info/external quotes. The examiners want to see that you know the set texts thoroughly, and that you're able to analyse how the author/poet/playwright uses language in order to produce meaning within the parameters of those texts. They don't want to see you discuss how, say, D.H. Lawrence's repeated use of the word 'thwarted' recalls the emasculation he experienced when he allowed his partner Frieda to have sex with another man (I don't know if that's accurate information, in fact I'm pretty sure it isn't, but you get the point). You only have one hour to write one of these bad boys, so you want to fill it with as much language analysis and literary masturbation as you possibly can.