this thesis seeks to present a critical reading of virginia woolf’s mrs. dalloway and michael cunningham’s the hours in terms of an intertextual approach, concentrating on dialogic imagination, negativity, transposition and allusion. this study attempts to evaluate cunninghams perception of woolfs life and work by adopting kristevas conception of intertextuality and her consideration of the hours as a revolutionary text. the present research tries to illustrate the intertextuality in these two works by analyzing the textual discourses and discursive explanation. the hours an adaptation of woolfs mrs. dalloway (1925), is a well-written work that employs many of woolfs images and themes including identity, postmodernism and patriarchy in avant-garde atmosphere of mimicking woolfs writing style as well as echoing her voice. by using intertextuality as a tool, the thesis tries to demonstrate how each adaptation focuses on the interplay and interrelation of the texts. the present project attempts to explore the intertextual relationship between the hours and mrs. dalloway. the hours provokes interesting questions about the similarities between the two novels, and like many adaptations, it highlights specific themes in woolfs mrs. dalloway and represents them in contemporary contexts. in the analyzing process, the researcher aims to indicate how cunningham, as a writer and a reader of woolf, interprets her life and work. the importance of the intertextuality in the hours is that, cunningham by imitating mrs. dalloway and other intertexts, heightens and elaborates woolfs usefulness.