Introduction to the Paratext

Author(s): Gérard Genette and Marie Maclean

Source: New Literary History , Spring, 1991, Vol. 22, No. 2, Probings: Art, Criticism,
Genre (Spring, 1991), pp. 261-272
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/469037

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to New Literary History

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Introduction to the Paratext*

Gerard Genette

HE LITERARY WORK consists, exhaustively or essentially, of

text, that is to say (a very minimal definition) in a more or
less lengthy sequence of verbal utterances more or less con
taining meaning. But this text rarely appears in its naked sta
without the reinforcement and accompaniment of a certain numbe
of productions, themselves verbal or not, like an author's name
title, a preface, illustrations. One does not always know if one shou
consider that they belong to the text or not, but in any case th
surround it and prolong it, precisely in order to present it, in
usual sense of this verb, but also in its strongest meaning: to make
it present, to assure its presence in the world, its "reception" and
consumption, in the form, nowadays at least, of a book. Th
accompaniment, of varying size and style, constitutes what I on
christened elsewhere,' in conformity with the frequently ambiguo
meaning of this prefix in French2--consider, I said, adjectives l
parafiscal or paramilitary-the paratext of the work. Thus the parate
is for us the means by which a text makes a book of itself an
proposes itself as such to its readers, and more generally to t
public. Rather than with a limit or a sealed frontier, we are dealin
in this case with a threshold, or-the term Borges used about
preface-with a "vestibule" which offers to anyone and everyo
the possibility either of entering or of turning back. "An undecid
zone"3 between the inside and the outside, itself without rigoro
limits, either towards the interior (the text) or towards the exteri
(the discourse of the world on the text), a border, or as Philip
Lejeune said, "the fringe of the printed text which, in reality, contr
the whole reading."4 This fringe, in effect, always bearer of
authorial commentary either more or less legitimated by the auth
constitutes, between the text and what lies outside it, a zone not
just of transition, but of transaction; the privileged site of a pragmatics
and of a strategy, of an action on the public in the service, well or

*Reprinted in translation by Marie Maclean from Seuils (Paris, 1987), with permission
of Georges Borchardt, Inc.

New Literary History, 1991, 22: 261-272

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
262 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

badly understood and accom

text and a more pertinent r
the eyes of the author and hi
to say that we will return to t
deal only with this action, its
indicate what is at stake here
innocent question should su
without the help of any ins
Joyce's Ulysses if it were not
The paratext thus is empiri
practices and discourses of a
porate under this term in the
convergence of effects, whi
their diversity of aspect. The
allows me to dispense with a p
for the provisional obscurity
delay defining. The order of t
in conformity with that in
which it investigates: exterior
author, title, and what follow
which is certainly not always
thing which I christen epitext
arbitrary, for many future r
example, to an interview wit
a newspaper review or a rec
latter, according to our conve
paratext, which is defined b
the author; but the advantage
superior to its disadvantages
not rigorously binding, and
ginning at the end or the m
method, if you can call it a
Furthermore, the presence
messages, of which I propose
probably in no way exhaustive
tematic: there exist books w
interviews, and periods have
an author's name, and even of
and means of the paratext a
periods, cultures, genres, auth
with sometimes considerable
nized fact that a "media dom
a type of discourse unknown

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
INTRODUCTION TO THE PARATEXT 263

in antiquity and the Middle Ages, perio

circulated in their almost raw state,
lacking any formula of presentation. I
fact of transcription-but also of oral
conceptuality of the text a certain degr
graphic or phonic, which can induce
effects. Seen in this way, one can proba
not exist, and there never has existed
Paradoxically, there do exist on the oth
paratexts without text, since there ex
or aborted works of which we only k
post-Homeric epics or classical Greek
l'6paule which Chretien de Troyes attri
Cliges, or that Bataille des Thermopyles
abandoned projects, and of which we
the word cnemide should not occur in it. These titles alone are
enough to make one dream, that is to say rather more th
many works which are available everywhere and easily r
Finally, the unequal sense of obligation associated with the pa
is felt by the audience and the reader too; no one is bound
a preface, even if this liberty is not always welcome to the au
and we will see that many notes are only addressed to certain r
As for the particular study of each of these elements, or
of these types of elements, it will obey the consideration of a
number of features whose examination permits one to def
status of a paratextual message, whatever it may be. These fea
essentially describe its spatial, temporal, substantial, pragmat
functional characteristics. To put this in a more concrete
defining an element of the paratext consists in determin
position (the question where?), its date of appearance, and eve
of disappearance (when?), its mode of existence, verbal o
(how?), the characteristics of its communicating instance, add
and addressee (from whom? to whom?), and the functions wh
purpose to its message (what is it good for?). A few words of justif
are no doubt necessary for this questionnaire, which may
simplistic but whose correct use defines almost entirely the m
of what follows.
An element of paratext, at least if it consists in a materialized
message, necessarily has a positioning, which one can situate in
relationship to that of the text itself: around the text, in the space
of the same volume, like the title or the preface, and sometimes
inserted into the interstices of the text, like the titles of chapters
or certain notes; I will call peritext6 this first spatial category, which

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
264 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

is certainly the most typica

first eleven chapters. Around
(or more prudent) distance, ar
at least originally, outside th
the media (interviews, conver
communication (corresponde
is the second category which
epitext, and which will be th
should be obvious from now o
exclusively and exhaustively th
words, for those who like for
The temporal situation of
relationship to that of the tex
the date of appearance of th
or original,s edition, certain
(publicly) at an earlier date:
vertisements that the book is
linked to a prepublication in a
disappear in the volume, lik
chapters of Ulysses whose off
put it in this way, entirely
Others, the most frequent,
they represent the original pa
de chagrin, produced in 1831 w
others appear later than the
edition, like the preface to Th
or to a much later re-edition, l
(twenty-nine years). For func
it is appropriate here to dist
simply subsequent (which is t
paratext (which is the case wi
after the death of the author
them as posthumous; if they
adopt the neologism propose
anthumous paratext.9 But th
belated elements, for a para
and posthumous, if it accomp
as do the title and the generic
Henry Brulard, 6crite par lui-mi
So if an element of the parat
it can equally disappear, defi
of the author or through outs
wear and tear of time. Many t

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
INTRODUCTION TO THE PARATEXT 265

been reduced by posterity, even on the

modern editions, and all the original
untarily suppressed in 1842, when th
humaine took place. These very frequ
the length of life of the elements of
brief: the record in this case, to my
preface of La Peau de chagrin (one m
"definitively or not": for it is a fact th
example at the time of a new edition,
time of a later edition; certain notes of La Nouvelle Hiloise which
disappear in the second edition very soon return; and the prefaces
"suppressed" by Balzac in 1842 may be found today in all the good
editions. The duration of the paratext is frequently subject to eclipse,
and this intermittent character, to which I will return, is very closely
linked to its essentially functional nature.
The question of substantial status will be here determined, or
evaded, as it frequently is in practice, by the fact that practically
all the paratexts considered will be themselves of a textual, or at
least verbal, order: titles, prefaces, interviews, so many utterances,
of very differing extent, but which all share the linguistic status of
the text. Most frequently then the paratext is itself a text: if it is
not yet the text it is already textual. But one must bear in mind
the paratextual value which can belong to other types of expression:
iconic (the illustrations), material (everything which proceeds, for
example, from the sometimes very significant typographical choices
made in the composition of a book), or purely factual. I call factual
that paratext which consists, not in an explicit message (verbal or
other), but in a fact whose mere existence, if it is known to the
public, makes some commentary on the text and bears on its re-
ception. Thus the matter of the age or the sex of the author (How
many works, from Rimbaud to Sollers, have owed a part of their
renown or their success to the prestige of youth? And does one
ever read a "woman's novel" exactly as one reads a novel as such,
that is to say, a man's novel?), or the matter of the date of the
work: "true admiration," Renan used to say, "is historical"; at least
it is certain that the historical awareness of the period which saw
the birth of a work is rarely a matter of indifference when reading
it. I suggest here obvious matters characteristic of the factual para-
text, and there are many others, more futile, such as belonging to
an academy (or other glorious body), or obtaining a literary prize;
or more fundamental ones, to which we will return, like the existence,
around the work, of an implicit context which defines or modifies
its meaning in one way or another: the authorial context, for

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 266 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

example, constituted around

Comidie humaine; the generic
and this totality by the exis
the historical context const
nineteenth century," and s
define the nature or measure
to the context, but let us at
context creates a paratext.
factual paratext, may be br
or not by a reminder which
generic indication, mention
age in a cover note, indirect
on; but to be known through
not always need to be ment
Recherche, the two biograp
ancestry of Proust and his ho
creates an inevitable paratex
to these two subjects. I do n
say that those who know it
who do not, and that anyon
fun of us. The same applies
to read L'Assommoir like an
episode of Les Rougon-Macq
readings.
The pragmatic status of a paratextual element is defined by the
characteristics of its communicatory instance or situation: nature of
the addresser, of the addressee, degree of authority and responsibility
of the first, illocutionary force of his message, and probably some
others which have escaped me. The addresser of a paratextual
message (as of any other message) is not necessarily the person who
actually wrote it, whose identity matters little to us, as if the foreword
to La Comidie humaine, signed Balzac, had in fact been drawn up
by one of his friends: the addresser is defined by putative attribution
and by assumed responsibility. We are dealing most often with the
author (authorial paratext), but we may be dealing just as well with
the publisher: unless signed by the author, a cover note usually
belongs to the editorial paratext. The author and the publisher are
(legally as well) the two people responsible for the text and for the
paratext, who may delegate a part of their responsibility to a third
person: a preface written by this third person and accepted by the
author, like that of Anatole France for Les Plaisirs et les jours, still
belongs, it seems to me (by the very fact of being so accepted), to
the paratext-this time allographic. There are other situations in

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
INTRODUCTION TO THE PARATEXT 267

which responsibility for the paratext is i

in an interview, between the author a
him, who generally "records" and repo
words.

The addressee may be roughly defined as the "public," but this

definition is much too loose, for the public of a book stretches
virtually to the whole of humanity, and there is need for some
qualifications. Certain elements of the paratext are effectively ad-
dressed to (which does not mean that they reach) the public in
general, that is to say anybody at all: this is so in the case (I will
come back to this) of a title, or of an interview. Others are addressed
(with the same reservation) more specifically, and more restrictively,
to the readers of the text alone: this is typically the case of the
preface. Others, like earlier forms of the cover note, are addressed
to critics alone; others, to booksellers; all this constituting (whether
peritext or epitext) what we will call the public paratext. Others are
addressed, orally or in writing, simply to individuals, known or
unknown, who are not expected to make the matter public: this is
the private paratext, of which the most private part consists of
messages addressed by the author to himself, in his diary or else-
where--an intimate paratext, by the very fact that it is intended for
himself, no matter what its purport may be.
The definition of the paratext involves the necessity that someone
should always be responsible for it, whether the author or one of
his associates, but this necessity has various degrees. I will borrow
from political vocabulary a current distinction, more easy to use
than to define-that of the official and of the officious. Any para-
textual message for which the author and/or the editor assumes a
responsibility which he cannot escape is official. Thus everything is
official which, whether its source be the author or the editor, is
present in the anthumous paratext, like the title or the original
preface; or then again commentaries signed by the author in a work
for which he takes complete responsibility, like Le Vent Paraclet by
Michel Tournier, for example. On the other hand, the greater part
of the authorial epitext- interviews, conversations and confidences-
is officious, because the author can always more or less get rid of
his responsibilities by denials such as "That is not exactly what I
said," or "I was talking off the cuff," or "It was not intended for
publication," or even by a "solemn declaration" like that which
Robbe-Grillet made at Cerisy, denying holus bolus any "importance"
to his "newspaper articles more or less put together in a volume
under the title of Essays" and "even more so" to the "oral declarations
which I may make here, even if I allow them to be published

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
268 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

afterwards"-a statement which

of the paradox of the Cretan.
we call officious anything the
or allows that person to say, w
or "authorized" commentator; c
or a Stuart Gilbert in the circu
but for which he did not tak
keys to Ulysses. Naturally ther
minate situations in what is re
the advantage of these nuanc
one's interest that certain thin
(publicly) said them oneself.
A last pragmatic characteris
borrowing this adjective very f
guage, the illocutionary force o
of graduated status. A paratex
information, for example the
publication. It may impart an a
interpretation; this is the card
is still that of the generic indi
pages: novel does not mean "
definition which is not in th
rather: "Please consider this
decision: Stendhal, or Le Rouge
Stendhal" (which is false as far
book is called Le Rouge et le n
choose Stendhal as a pseudon
entitle this book Le Rouge et
undertaking: some generic indi
oirs) have, as we know, a mor
undertake to tell the truth") th
statement like First volume o
or, as Northrop Frye says, of
of advice, or even of injunction
to the Contemplations, "must
of one dead"; "All this," write
Barthes par lui-me"me, "must be
in a novel,"" and some permi
such and such an order, you
as clearly, though by reversal,
Certain elements even imply the
that is to say the power to ac
the session"): this is what hap

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
INTRODUCTION TO THE PARATEXT 269

to inscribe a book to So and So is ob

print, or to write on one of its page
So and So"-a borderline case of parat
sufficient to say it in order to do it.
element of this in the imposition
pseudonym, actions mimetic of all cr
These remarks on illocutionary force h
us toward the essential, which is the fu
Essential, because, quite obviously, and
that we will meet here and there, the
a fundamentally heteronomous, auxili
service of something else which const
namely the text. No matter what aesth
("fine title," preface-manifesto), no ma
what paradoxical inversion the autho
element is always subordinate to "its"
determines the essentials of its aspec
contrast to the characteristics of place,
pragmatic status, the functions of the
theoretically, and in a way, a priori, in
temporal, substantial, and pragmatic
ement is determined by a more or l
general and constant grid of personal
only adopt one term to the exclusion of
(by definition) peritextual; it is orig
authorial or allographic, and so on, a
necessities defines in a rigid way a
functional choices are not of the alternative and exclusive order of
either/or. A title, a dedication, a preface, an interview can have sev
goals at once, chosen nonexclusively from the more or less o
repertory proper to each type of element: the title has its functio
the dedication has its, the preface looks after others, or sometime
the same, without prejudice to more narrow specifications; a thema
title like War and Peace does not describe its text in the same w
as a formal title like Epistles or Sonnets. What is at stake in
dedication of one copy is not the same as in the dedication of
work. A belated preface does not have the same goals as an orig
preface, nor an allographic preface those of an authorial prefa
and so on. And so the functions of the paratext constitute a v
empirical and very diverse object, which must be derived in
inductive way, genre by genre and often species by species. T
only meaningful regularities that one can introduce into this appar
contingence consist in establishing these relations of dependen

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
270 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

between functions and status

functional types, and yet again
and of messages to some fundam
for experience shows that one
more "constrained" than man
less often than they imagine.
As for the effects of converg
from the composition, around
and whose often very delicate
with regard to autobiography
dividual analysis (and synthesis
a generic study like our own
elementary illustration, since
to two terms, a titular entity l
obviously, between the title i
the generic indication (novel
invited to resolve if he can, or
of the type "to lie truly," and
give him the key, singular b
destined to set a fashion,'2 or
One last point, one trusts un
a synchronic and not a diachr
picture and not at a history o
inspired by any disdain for th
by the feeling that it is right t
evolution. In its essentials, in
the empirical objects inherite
preface"), on the one hand by
objects (the original authoria
allographic preface, and so on
them into larger sets (the pe
so deriving categories until now
articulation defines the parat
constitutes a necessary first ste
perspective. Diachronic consid
from our study, which deals, a
of literary practice (the orga
public), and which will somet
like an essay on the customs
Letters. But they will not be
each element of the paratext h
as literature itself, others have
status, after centuries of "hidd

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
INTRODUCTION TO THE PARATEXT 271

history, with the invention of the book

journalism and of the modern media,
between whiles, and very often some ta
play, for better or worse, an analogous
have known, and still know, a more ra
evolution than certain others (but stabilit
change): thus the title has its very obviou
"date" by their mere utterance; the author
has scarcely changed, except in its materi
cydides. The general history of the par
rhythms of the stages of the technical
means and ways, will probably be that o
of sliding, of substitution, of compensatio
assure its permanence and, to a certain
efficacity over the span of the centuries.
a history, one would have to have at on
and more complete study than this, which
of western culture, and indeed too rarely
literature. What follows then is only a ve
at the very provisional service of what, th
follow it.

ECOLE DES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES

(Translated by Marie Maclean)

NOTES

1 See Gerard Genette, Palimpsestes (Paris, 1981), p. 9.

2 And probably in several other languages, if one believes this rema
Miller, which applies to English: "Para is an antithetical prefix whic
once proximity and distance, similarity and difference, interiority a
. a thing which is situated at once on this side and on that of a f
threshold or of a margin, of equal status and yet secondary, subsidiary
like a guest to his host, a slave to his master. A thing in para is not
on both sides of the frontier which separates the exterior and the inte
the frontier itself, the screen which creates a permeable membrane
inside and the outside. It operates their confusion, letting the outsid
the inside go out, it divides them and unites them" ("The Criti
Deconstruction and Criticism, ed. Harold Bloom et al. [New York, 197
a very fine description of the activity of the paratext.
3 The image seems to strike anyone who deals with the paratext: "an
zone . . . where there are mixed two series of codes: the social code, in
aspect, and the codes which produce or regulate the text" (Claude
une socio-critique, ou variations sur un incipit," Littirature, 1 [1971
mediary zone between what lies outside the text and the text its

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 272 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Compagnon, La Seconde main [Paris, 1

lations of quoted material are my ow
4 Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiogr
sentence shows clearly that the author
"name of author, title, subtitle, name o
the ambiguous play of the prefaces."
5 I say now texts and not simply wor
necessity of a paratext imposes itself on
aim, even if our present study is limit
6 This notion is close to that of "per
56.

7 In addition, one must be clear tha

posthumous) sometimes contains elem
the sense in which I define it: thus e
(Sartre, Pleiade; Michelet, Flammarion
8 I will ignore here the technical di
which are sometimes marked between t
the princeps edition, and so on and wi
9 Allais thus describes those of his
while he was alive. I must also recall t
very old (and superb) false etymology: p
10 Alain Robbe-Grillet, Colloque Robbe-
11 Victor Hugo, Preface, in his Les
Barthes, Roland Barthes par lui-mime (
of the text.

12 See, e.g., Philippe Roger, Roland Barthes, roman (Paris, 1986). "To lie truly" is
also a reference to the title (Le Mentir-vrai) of another book by Aragon.

This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:21:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms