Paratexts : thresholds of interpretation
"Paratexts 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 Paratexts, an English translation of Seuils, Gerard Genette shows how the special pragmatic status of paratextual declarations 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 of the Republic of Letters as they are 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 interacts with more general questions of literature as a cultural institution, and situates Genette's work in contemporary literary theory."--Jacket
History
xxv, 427 pages ; 23 cm.
9780521413503, 9780521424066, 0521413508, 0521424062
36778284
Introduction
The publisher's peritext
The name of the author
Titles
The please-insert
Dedications and inscriptions
Epigraphs
The prefatorial situtation of communication
The functions of the original preface
Other prefaces, other functions
Intertitles
Notes
The public epitext
The private epitext
Conclusion
Translation of: Seuils