Look, *sorry to pop up yet again, but I might have given that reference
in full: Gerard Genette, Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation.
(Seuils, in the original; trans. Jane E. Lewin). This is a profusely
exampled account of (to quote, appropriately, the blurb), "those liminal
devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form
part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher and
reader: titles, forewords, epigraphs and publishers' jacket copy ..."
etc. I happen to be reading it for a course and am only on p. 47
(C.U.P., 1997), but skipping to the Conclusion (p. 407) he says
(surprisingly?), "The most essential of the paratext's properties ... is
functionality ... to ensure for the text a destiny consistent with the
author's purpose." And finally (p. 410), "A threshold exists to be
crossed".
e
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