Paratexts

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 Grard 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.