This thesis is an intra- and intertextual study focusing on Autran Dourado`s novels Tempo de amar and Ópera dos fantoches. On the basis of Kristeva s concept of intertextuality, Bakhtin s polyphony, Barthes`s idea that reading generates writing, the notion of open work and some of Borgess 1952 novel but also with his other works O risco do bordado and Ópera dos mortos. Then it is shown that Dourado and his characters dialogue with the Bible and other writers, Brazilian or foreign, such as Oswald de Andrade, Machado de Assis, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Flaubert, Virgil, Camilo Castelo Branco, Fernando Pessoa, Bernardim Ribeiro, Dante, Calderón de La Barca, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and discuss such issues as psychology in the novel, character, authorship, the relationship between fiction and reality, and the question of truth (as stated by Nietzsche), casting an ever wider intra- and intrertextual net in the rewriting.