Paratexts are those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that mediate between book, author and reader: titles, forewords and publishers' jacket copy form part of a book's private and public history. In this first English translation of Paratexts, Gérard Genette offers a global view of these liminal mediations and their relation to the reading public. With precision, clarity and through wide reference, he shows how paratexts interact with general questions of literature as a cultural institution. Richard Macksey's foreword situates Genette in contemporary literary theory.
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Book Description
Paratexts are the liminal devices and conventions, that mediate between book, author and reader--e.g. titles, forewords, publishers' jacket copy, etc. This first English translation offers a global view of liminal mediations and their relation to the reading public.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant essay,
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This review is from: Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Literature, Culture, Theory) (Hardcover)
Paratexts (titles, epigraphs, notes and the like) add dimensions of meaning and effect, theme and rhetorical power to literary works; yet, oddly, before Genette, they were taken for granted, that is: mis-taken.
Like his other major works, Narrative Discourse, and Palimspestes, Paratexts is a clear, well supported, and coherent encyclopedia of sub-forms defined and illustrated in a series of brilliant analyses. Genette's insights improve the reader's, not only into works both know, but above all, perhaps, into those as yet unread by either.
Of all recent French theorists, Genette is closest in spirit and method (as well as accessibility) to mid-century American formalists. And though his work can be exploited by cultural studies and even gender theorists, it remains sharply focused on the alpha and omega of literary study: the text.
David Lee Rubin
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
I give the name publisher's peritext to the whole zone of the peritext that is the direct and principal (but not exclusive) responsibility of the publisher (or perhaps, to be more abstract but also more exact, of the publishing house) - that is, the zone that exists merely by the fact that a book is published and possibly republished and offered to the public in one or several more or less varied presentations. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
allographic preface, delayed preface, fictive allographic, loaner name, other paratextual elements, paratextual function, paratextual message, private epitext, public epitext, genre indication, authorial preface, fictional preface, genre contract, overarching title, fictional notes, authorial note, thematic titles, novelistic works, modern preface, genre status, fictive author, delayed notes, imagined author, original preface, later preface Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Walter Scott, New York, Gil Blas, Roland Barthes, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Madame Bovary, Les Contemplations, Middle Ages, Mme Hanska, Anatole France, Julien Green, Renaud Camus, Clara Gazul, Doctor Faustus, Les Jeunes Filles, Les Plaisirs, The Name of the Rose, Thomas Mann, Waverley Novels, Les Martyrs, Robinson Crusoe, Victor Hugo, Virginia Woolf, Finnegans Wake New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
I give the name publisher's peritext to the whole zone of the peritext that is the direct and principal (but not exclusive) responsibility of the publisher (or perhaps, to be more abstract but also more exact, of the publishing house) - that is, the zone that exists merely by the fact that a book is published and possibly republished and offered to the public in one or several more or less varied presentations. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
allographic preface, delayed preface, fictive allographic, loaner name, other paratextual elements, paratextual function, paratextual message, private epitext, public epitext, genre indication, authorial preface, fictional preface, genre contract, overarching title, fictional notes, authorial note, thematic titles, novelistic works, modern preface, genre status, fictive author, delayed notes, imagined author, original preface, later preface Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Walter Scott, New York, Gil Blas, Roland Barthes, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Madame Bovary, Les Contemplations, Middle Ages, Mme Hanska, Anatole France, Julien Green, Renaud Camus, Clara Gazul, Doctor Faustus, Les Jeunes Filles, Les Plaisirs, The Name of the Rose, Thomas Mann, Waverley Novels, Les Martyrs, Robinson Crusoe, Victor Hugo, Virginia Woolf, Finnegans Wake New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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75
books
cite this book:
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- Les Contemplations by Victor Hugo on 7 pages
- Henri Matisse, roman by Louis Aragon on 6 pages
- The Chouans (Penguin Classics) by Honoré de Balzac on 5 pages
- Doctor Faustus (Everyman's Library) by Thomas Mann on 5 pages
- Cousin Pons (Poor Relations, Part 2) (Penguin Classics) by Honoré de Balzac on 5 pages
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- Debussy and the Fragment (Chiasma 18) by Linda Cummins on page 151, page 165, and page 168
- Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640 by David Moore Bergeron in Front Matter, page 23, and Back Matter
- Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel by Janine Barchas in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380-1589 by Jennifer Summit in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Narrative Form by Suzanne Keen on page 139, and Back Matter
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