In this paper, intertextuality—an omnipresent and structuring force in Gaddis’s novel Carpenter’s Gothic (1985)—is defined as 'an impression of déjà-lu' to be seen in terms of reminiscence. Three aspects are more particularly studied, the presence of other texts (hypotexts), mostly the Bible and Jane Eyre, the insertion of non fictional elements and self quotations. Whatever its different manifestations, intertextuality in Carpenter’s Gothic questions the notion of identity, the frontier between fiction and reality, between true and false, the status of the wording of the text, and the part played by the reader. Examining a few examples shows how the presence of a hypotext is revealed to or concealed from the reader, how the outline of the foreign body is designed then blurred through different intertextual layers. The analysis of Marc Cholodenko’s translation, which is very close to the letter of the original, highlights both the linguistic and cultural difficulties that have been overcome, and helps understand how the intertextual play, created in the original and then filtered through the sense of déjà-lu of the translator and of the reader, can develop in the translated text.