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 | | Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Literature, Culture, Theory) by Girard Genette, Richard Macksey (Foreword), Jane E. Lewin (Translator) ISBN-10: 9780521413503 ISBN-10: 0-521-41350-8 ISBN-13: 9780521413503 ISBN-13: 978-0-521-41350-3 Hardcover 1997-03-13 Cambridge University Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description 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. | ||
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. | ||
Reviews | ||
A brilliant essay 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 | ||