Paratext

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Paratext (from the Greek para , "next to, against, beyond something") is a term used in intertextuality research for text types or text elements that accompany or supplement a basic text (main text) and control its reception, either as a measure by the author himself or as support from others of his intentions. The term was originally developed by Gérard Genette (1987) with reference to literary works, but was extended by himself and subsequent research to works in other media .

Peritext and epitext

Paratext is divided into peritext and epitext according to the material reference to the basic text in the media presentation:

  • Peritext is paratext, which is materially connected to the basic text and which essentially determines its public presentation in the sense of the author, as the author's own addition or as a directing measure of mediating helpers (editors). In the case of a book, it is about the title , possibly with the author and genre , ingredients such as dedication , acknowledgment , formal defense against legal action (also ironic), motto , foreword or afterword as well as structuring and content-related means such as subheadings and tables of contents . In the sense of an expanded work concept, it is also referred to as a work-internal paratext.
  • Epitext is in this sense factory external Para text separately circulates from the base text that can be inserted but later in the Peritext in the form of attachments or ancillary products and allows the author or his agents, the reception of the work in addition independent of its actual presentation yet to control. This includes, for example, interviews, letters and diary entries from the author, author portraits or texts from the publisher's advertising.

In terms of the formula peritext + epitext = paratext , the generic term paratext is completely covered by both sub-terms in Genette and no peri- or epitext is provided that is not at the same time paratext.

Paratext and authority

With Genette, the affiliation to the paratext is tied to the fact that it comes from the same author as the basic text or, as an allographer (from another hand), at least supports the intentions of the author, within the framework of what an author says “from a normal third party as a courtesy - which hardly goes beyond a preface - can expect or hope ”. Commenting marginal notes , footnotes or endnotes by third parties, the text-philological citation of development variants rejected by the author or independent scientific comments by third parties do not have the status of paratextuality according to this approach, but that of metatextuality .

The hermeneutical and demarcation problems that arise from recourse to the author's intention and the term 'normal third party' have, however, led to critical objections. A term usage that is widespread today and extended in the extension neglects the authorial intentionality or expectability as a defining criterion and tends to include everything in the term paratext that accompanies the presentation of a basic text, shapes it and guides its reception.

Critique of Semiotic Modernism

In his essay “The Masterpiece of an Unknown” Umberto Eco criticizes Gérard Genette's discursive introduction and implementation of the fashionable triad of terms paratext / peritext / epitext for common bibliophile phenomena of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Even contemporaries would have dealt parodistically and analytically with paratextual excesses. Eco describes e.g. B. the work of the author Thémiseul de Saint Hyacinthe, which published in the edition of 1745 "a popular song of forty lines" with a paratext of more than 600 pages with parodistic intent. This common practice, the "matter in itself", is not investigated further by Genette.

literature

  • Gérard Genette: Palimpsests. Second level literature . Translated by Wolfram Bayer and Dieter Hornig. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1993 (= Edition Suhrkamp , New Series, 683), ISBN 3-518-11683-5 ; French edition: Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré. Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1982, ISBN 2-02-006116-3 .
  • Gérard Genette: Paratexts. The book about the accessories of the book. Translated by Dieter Hornig, with a foreword by Harald Weinrich . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1989, ISBN 3-593-34061-5 ; French edition: Seuils. Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-02-009532-7 .
  • Martin Gerstenbräun-Krug, Nadja Reinhard (ed.): Paratextual politics and practice. Interdependencies between work and authorship. Böhlau, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20431-2 .
  • Laura Jansen (Ed.): The Roman Paratext. Frame, texts, readers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-02436-6 .
  • Klaus Kreimeier , Georg Stanitzek (ed.): Paratexts in literature, film, television. Academy, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-003762-8 .
  • Michael Ponstingl: Vienna in the picture. Photo books of the 20th century. Christian Brandstätter Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902510-94-5 . [The book analyzes the paratexts of photo books.]
  • Annika Rockenberger: "Paratext" and new media. Problems and perspectives of a concept transfer. In: PhiN. Philologie im Netz , 76 (2016), pp. 20–60 ( online ) [reconstructs Genette's definition of the term “paratext” and discusses its transfer to the field of new media].
  • Georg Stanitzek: Book: Medium and Form - in a paratext theoretical perspective. In: Ursula Rautenberg (Ed.): Book Studies in Germany. Volume 1: Theory and Research. De Gruyter, Saur, Berlin / New York 2010, pp. 157-200, ISBN 978-3-11-020036-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For example: “The characters and plot of this story are fictitious. If the description of certain journalistic practices shows similarities with the practices of the 'Bild' newspaper , then these similarities are neither intentional nor accidental, but inevitable ”( Heinrich Böll : Die lost honor of Katharina Blum or: How violence develops and where to It can lead. Narrative . With an afterword by the author: Ten years later. 42nd edition. Dtv: Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-01150-5 , p. 5).
  2. ↑ Genette: Paratexte (1989), p. 321ff.
  3. ^ Till Dembeck: Text frames. Border regions of literary works in the 18th century (Gottsched, Wieland, Moritz, Jean Paul). De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019602-3 , p. 12ff.
  4. ↑ Umberto Eco: The Masterpiece of an Unknown . In: The Art of Loving Books . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-13989-2 , pp. 165-176 .