Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Literature, Culture, Theory, Series Number 20)

Genette, Gerard

ISBN 10: 0521413508 / ISBN 13: 9780521413503

Published by Cambridge University Press, 1997

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Literature, Culture, Theory, Series Number 20)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521413508
• ISBN 13: 9780521413503
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

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.