- Paratext
Literary theorist
Gérard Genette defines Paratext as those things in a published work that accompany the text, things such as the author's name, the title,preface or introduction, orillustration s. [Genette "Paratext: Thresholds of interpretation" page 1] Genette states "More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold." It is "a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that ... is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it". Then quotingPhilippe Lejeune , Genette further describes paratext as "a fringe of the printed text which in reality controls one's whole reading of the text".References
Bibliography
* Genette, Gérard: "Seuils". Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987. (translated as "Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation", Cambridge: CUP, 1997)
* Huber, Alexander: [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~bodl0153/elzma.pdf "Paratexte in der englischen Erzählprosa des 18. Jahrhunderts/Paratexts in eighteenth-century English prose fiction"] [PDF 1.5 MB] . Master's thesis (in German). Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, 1997.* Ronald Collins & David Skover, "Paratexts," Stanford Law Review, vol. 44, pp. 509-552 (1992)
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