Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation

As someone working on a PhD looking (in part) at what physical features a particular type of book (the encyclopaedia) comprises, I was bound to read this. What I didn't know is what a pleasure it would be. Genette's writing (and the translation's rendering of it) is elegant, observant and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Be warned that his examples, predictably enough, are largely drawn from French literature, something of which I have read very little. His argument remains valid, but you do have to spend a lot of time in the company of Flaubert, Balzac, Proust etc. A possibly more important point is that Genette is, by his own admission, not a book historian and he's not really in a 'death of the author' world. The paratext is certainly show more part of the reader's experience of the work, but the author remains paramount as its producer. show less

Fondamentale. Genette è, nella critica letteraria, il corrispettivo di Georges Perec nella letteratura. Provare per credere.