By Alistair Rolls, Maire-Laure Vuaille-Barcan
Gérard Genette’s seminal examine of the paratext, Seuils (1987), is the place to begin for this number of essays, all of which search not just to have interaction with Genette’s taxonomy and observe it, but additionally to interrogate it and to maneuver via and past it. as well as mapping Genette’s association of (para)textual area onto a few French texts, together with novels and performs, texts translated into French, ebook sequence and publishing advertising fabric, those essays absorb a few of the demanding situations raised in Seuils in addition to posing their very own. for instance, the connection among Genette’s paintings and deconstructionist ways to textual content and the intersection of paratextuality and translation, that are hinted at by way of Genette, are explored in additional element within the quantity, as is the idea of relocating via and past the paratext. As such, this booklet deals an important re-engagement with and deployment of paratextual thought and perform.
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Extra info for Masking Strategies: Unwrapping the French Paratext
Sample text
11 Nabokov is one of the writers from whom Georges Perec systematically quotes in La Vie mode d’emploi (one such quotation is indeed taken from Pale Fire),12 and Perec emulates his admired predecessor in including in this work a disproportionately extensive paratextual apparatus: a concluding ninety-page series of pièces annexes comprises an index of names 11 12 Julian Barnes’s novel Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) likewise brings to life the voice of an enthusiastic student of and commentator on Flaubert, one Geof frey Braithwaite, whose commentary is progressively infiltrated and distracted by his own obsessions.
If he dares to disbelieve Stendhal’s letter to Mérimée, the reader can experience the work with a heightened degree of intimacy. By stripping, or perhaps rather by deconstructing, the barrier that the paratext represents, the reader undresses the text, discovering aspects of its character neither outlined in the paratext nor ostensibly destined for disclosure by the author. In this way, the paratext foreshadows a power play between author and reader, with the impotence of one feeding the power of the other.
55). The significance of omnipotence, when juxtaposed to Octave’s impotence, is telling. God is Octave’s antithesis. This Creator-God, Octave’s faith in whom is being threatened by his studies, is powerful yet elusive (due to his lack of physical presence). As a list of Holy attributes is collated, parallels begin to emerge, according to which God increasingly takes on the trappings of the author. They share the role of Creator, both are thought of as being in a position of ultimate and unquestionable power, and, like the relationship between God and the world, the author’s power over a work is traditionally acknowledged despite his lack of physical presence within it.
