Paratexts: Thresholds of InterpretationParatexts are those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher and reader: titles, forewords, epigraphs and publishers' jacket copy are part of a book's private and public history. In this first English translation of Paratexts, Gérard Genette shows how the special pragmatic status of paratextual declaration requires a carefully calibrated analysis of their illocutionary force. With clarity, precision and an extraordinary range of reference, Paratexts constitutes an encyclopedic survey of the customs and institutions as revealed in the borderlands of the text. Genette presents a global view of these liminal mediations and the logic of their relation to the reading public by studying each element as a literary function. Richard Macksey's foreword describes how the poetics of paratexts interact with more general questions of literature as a cultural institution, and situates Gennet's work in contemporary literary theory. |
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actorial addressee allographic preface already ambiguous anonymous apocryphal appear Aragon Armance attributed authorial preface autobiography Balzac Barthes Borges called century chapter character Chateaubriand classical collection Comédie humaine commentary copy critics dedicatee dedication dedicatory epistle delayed preface disavowing discourse epigraph epitext essays example fact fiction fictive Flaubert foreword French function Genette Génie du christianisme genre indication Gide head Henri Matisse Hugo inscription intertitles interview journal La Comédie humaine Le Père Goriot least less letter literary Madame Bovary manuscript means mention Molière narrative notes novel novelistic obviously œuvre original edition original preface paratext paratextual element perhaps peritext person please-insert Pléiade poems Poétique postface posthumous preface-writer present prologue Proust pseudonym published publisher's reader Recherche Renaud Camus responsibility Roland Barthes Roman Sainte-Beuve Salammbô seems sender Seuil signed sometimes Stendhal subtitle thematic Tom Jones translation undoubtedly Valéry volume word writing Zola