Renaissance Paratexts

"In his 1987 work Paratexts, the theorist Gérard Genette established physical form as crucial to the production of meaning. Here, experts in early modern book history, materiality and rhetorical culture present a series of compelling explorations of the architecture of early modern books. The essays challenge and extend Genette's taxonomy, exploring the paratext as both a material and a conceptual category. Renaissance Paratexts takes a fresh look at neglected sites, from imprints to endings, and from running titles to printers' flowers. Contributors' accounts of the making and circulation of books open up questions of the marking of gender, the politics of translation, geographies of the text and the interplay between reading and seeing. As much a history of misreading as of interpretation, the collection provides novel perspectives on the technologies of reading and exposes the complexity of the playful, proliferating and self-aware paratexts of English Renaissance books"--Provided by publisher. "Renaissance Paratexts reveals the importance of investigating the particular paratextual conventions in play in different historical periods. As Genette makes clear, some paratexts 'are as old as literature; others came into being - or acquired their official status, after centuries of 'secret life' that constitute their prehistory - with the invention of the book; others, with the birth of journalism and the modern media' (14). A number of the paratexts we listed at the beginning of this introduction are strikingly modern, particularly those made possible by computer technologies. Others, including the author interview and the review, developed alongside the periodical industry from the eighteenth century onwards. A few are much older than the printed codex. Most, however, came into being in the period with which this volume is concerned, following the invention of printing in around 1436, and the corresponding development of the book into the forms which are familiar to us today"--Provided by publisher.