Renaissance paratexts
By: edited by Helen Smith and Louise Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780521117395
Subjects: European literature; History and criticism; Paratext
Description: "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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / Helen Smith and Louise Wilson; Part I. Orders of the Book: 1. 'Imprinted by Simeon such a signe': reading early modern imprints / Helen Smith; 2. 'Intended to offenders': the running titles of early modern books / Matthew Day; 3. Changed opinion as to flowers / Juliet Fleming; 4. The beginning of 'The End': terminal paratext and the birth of print culture / William H. Sherman; Part II. Making Readers: 5. Editorial pledges in early modern dramatic paratexts / Sonia Massai; 6. Status anxiety and English Renaissance translation / Neil Rhodes; 7. Playful paratexts: the front matter of Anthony Munday's Iberian Romance translations / Louise Wilson; 8. 'Signifying, but not sounding': gender and paratext in the complaint genre / Danielle Clarke; Part III. Books and Users: 9. Unannotating Spenser / Jason Scott-Warren; 10. Reading the home: the case of The English Housewife / Wendy Wall; 11. Pictures, places and spaces: Sidney, Wroth, Wilton House and the Songe de Poliphile / Hester Lees-Jeffries; Afterword Peter Stallybrass; Select bibliography