Intertextuality is a much broader term than influence, (the direct effect, conscious or unconscious, of one author on another); intertextuality is the general condition by which it is possible for a text to be a text: the whole network of relations, conventions, and expectations by which the text is defined. Many modern critics argue that all texts are necessarily related by language and that there is no such thing as an absolute text. See metadrama, metafiction indeterminacy .