Entertainment / Literature / Paratext: In G???©rard Genette's work, Paratext: Thresholds of Interpretation, Genette introduces the idea of 'paratext,' i.e., anything external to the text itself that influences the way we read a text. These 'paratexts' can be almost infinite in number, but they might include a list of other works the author has published listed on the front cover, the gender of the author as indicated by his or her name, reviews written about the book, and editorial commentary about the work. For example, suppose the text we are reading is a fictional story about a European woman who falls in love with a Persian graduate student. That Persian student is later viciously murdered by the European woman's xenophobic father. If we see the author's name is 'Susan Jones' we might interpret the text differently than if we saw the author's name was 'Achmed bin Jaffah,' for instance. If the same author wrote a number of murder mysteries, we might be especially prone to read this new text as influenced by that early genre work, or even expect the current text to be (rightly or wrongly) yet another murder mystery. If we read a review calling attention to the theme of lust in a work, we might experience the book differently than if we had read a different review focusing on the theme of intolerance. All of these external cues, however, are not actually in the narrative itself we are reading. Thus, they are paratextual. A New Critic from the 1930s would probably argue that all paratexts are irrelevant to determining the meaning of literary art, and the paratextual should be ignored accordingly. Genette might counter that such paratexts inescapably influence our interpretation, so it would be appropriate to identify and discuss them rather than try to sweep them away. (also French peritext)
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