Literary writers have long been aware of the importance of paratextual signals, be it elements like miniatures in manuscripts, calligraphic variation and different fonts or experimental texts exploiting visual elements, as in Tristram Shandy or French symbolisme. As post-modern readers, however, we are so used to visual and marginal components being incorporated in the text that the contribution of such elements has been neglected in textual and historical linguistic studies for a long time. Similarly, we consider tables of contents and indexes as integral parts of certain texts (much as we do with paralinguistic elements in spoken communication), but the ways in which these connect to the text itself, and in many ways shape it, have not been analysed in a systematic way in diachrony. In the last few years, however, interest in the material features of older texts has sparked research on the apparently ‘marginal’ textual elements by historical linguists.
The volume reviewed here represents a key contribution to a blossoming field of studies that combines historical pragmatics and discourse analysis with notions traditionally coming from philology, literary criticism and semiotics, in order to deepen our understanding of texts as complex products, where the main body of words is not the only component to consider. Among the first results of this recently established field is a special issue of Studia Neophilologica, in which the ‘material turn in philology’ is profitably combined with historical linguistics to give manuscript studies new impulse, aided by recent developments in digital humanities (Kytö & Peikola Reference Kytö and Peikola2014: 1). This has been followed by many more contributions, often stemming from dedicated conferences and workshops, especially focusing on English data. In some journal articles, such as Yáñez-Bouza (Reference Yáñez-Bouza2017), the notion of paratext is specifically invoked, and at the same time new collections (Peikola et al. Reference Peikola, Mäkilähde, Salmi, Varila and Skaffari2017) focus on the interrelation of language and visual elements in medieval and Early Modern English texts. The book reviewed here further extends the diachronic span of this approach, significantly including Late Modern printed sources and thus enabling an expansion of the perspective on paratextual devices throughout the English-language textual tradition.
The book is divided into three parts, providing a clear partition into more theory-oriented chapters and more detailed case studies. Part I concerns the conceptualisation of text and framing phenomena and is the most substantial, which is not surprising given the fact that the development of a framework starting from literary texts but now applied to linguistic studies is still in progress. The editors take as their starting point the categorisation outlined by Genette in the 1980s (Reference Genette1991, Reference Genette1997) of different types and functions of paratext, and develop, from that classification, a number of research questions, outlined in chapter 1 (‘Framing framing: The multifaceted phenomena of paratext, metadiscourse and framing’). The ensuing chapters revolve around these questions, trying to establish how Genette's notion of paratext relates to other categories such as metadiscourse and framing; furthermore, the contributions in the volume have the aim of clarifying the functions of different types of paratext, and of investigating how paratext contributes to communication in specific cultural environments. Taking into account elements such as marginalia, indexes, footnotes and annotations, as well as accompanying images, prefatory matters and even the very mise en page of a text can bring to light further messages from authors, commentators, editors, publishers and printers. These messages can often be metadiscoursal, in that they refer to the text but also contribute to the establishment of a relationship with the reader. The first, introductory chapter thus reviews the main categories of metadiscourse and framing, and establishes a general classification of the phenomena involved as well as of their communicative functions, highlighting the ways in which the individual contributions investigate specific aspects of the topic. The chapter also provides a useful review of examples of paratext and peritext, mostly from medieval manuscripts.
Chapter 2, ‘On the dynamic interaction between peritext and epitext: Punch magazine as a case study’, by Jukka Tyrkkö and Jenni Räikkonen, offers remarks on the importance of paratext for the publishing industry, and provides interesting examples from a selection of issues of Punch magazine (1841–1920), and especially on the intertwining of text and image. The magazine drew on different textual genres, including poems and dialogues, and famously employed images and cartoons for both informative and humorous purposes. The chapter aptly uses these features as a testing ground for theoretical and taxonomic hypotheses about the typology and the communicative functions of paratext. The authors report on diachronic changes in the magazine, with different text types employed more prominently in certain periods, and explores the possibility of considering images as texts, especially in relation to the recurrence of the central and iconic character of Mr Punch.
In chapter 3, ‘The footnote in Late Modern English historiographical writing’, Claudia Claridge and Sebastian Wagner investigate the history and different functions of the footnote, engaging with Genette's classification and questioning the possible relations between the main text and the footnote. The mainly interpersonal and metadiscoursal functions of this feature are then analysed in a corpus of English historiography of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revealing the ways in which footnotes (including marginalia or side notes, which were widely used at the time) were used to express authorial positioning and evaluative stance. The authors use a different model and terminology, i.e. Martin & White's (Reference Martin and White2005) notion of appraisal, but they essentially refer to the same notions and categories as models based on stance. The footnotes analysed are mostly evidential, but this is only part of the story. They also have textual function, elaborating on or extending the content of the main text; evaluation and other forms of stance-taking such as disclaimers, distancing moves and endorsements are also very frequent and reveal that these ‘additions’ to the text are far from merely factual or stance-neutral, as they could seem in a merely quantitative perspective.
Chapter 4, by Wendy Scase (‘Threshold-switching: Paratextual functions of scribal colophons in Old and Middle English manuscripts’), is about colophons in Old and Middle English, and starts from Genette's theory by seeing the colophon as a threshold (in Genette's terminology), whose role is, however, not specifically mentioned or outlined by Genette himself. An interesting feature is the temporal relation between main text and colophon, which is often asynchronous, and therefore crosses a temporal ‘threshold’, too. The analysis highlights the fact that the colophon often refers back not to the content of the main text, but to its material aspects, such as the quality of scribal activity, and is therefore indeed a problematic category within Genette's theory.
Chapter 5, ‘Framing material in early literacy: Presenting literacy and its agents in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts’, by Ursula Lenker, similarly focuses on framing devices as ‘doors’ to the text, as they are defined explicitly in Gregory the Great's Liber Pastoralis. Several Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, notably Alfredian and Ælfrician ones, have prefaces, epilogues or other paratextual material in Old English (regardless of the language of the main text), which establish authorship and frame the text as an authoritative source. Although derived from Latin models, these materials (often found to be later additions) also establish a specifically Anglo-Saxon tradition. The second part of the chapter is devoted to Anglo-Saxon colophons, which show interesting communicative functions and often refer to the reader and/or to the reading activity, besides explicitly closing the text and reaffirming authorship. In several formulae, the book ‘speaks’ in the first person, as in ‘He who reads me will find…’ or ‘X wrote me’, evoking the similar formulae employed already in runic script on Anglo-Saxon manufacts, and thus projecting the idea of the text as ‘object’, produced by somebody and for somebody.
The latter element mentioned, i.e. the fact that texts are produced for an audience, is the focus of the contributions in part II of the book, which show how textual framing is performed by providing orientation to the reader. In chapter 6, Elisabetta Cecconi explores paratextual devices in seventeenth-century news texts of different types (‘Paratext and ideology in 17th-century news genres: A comparative discourse analysis of paratextual elements in news broadside ballads and occasional news pamphlets’). The author works with Hyland's (Reference Hyland2005) model, as well as with an elaboration of Genette's model (Birke & Christ Reference Birke and Christ2013) in which navigational/orientational, commercial and interpretive functions of paratext are distinguished, to uncover relevant metadiscoursal strategies. The particular focus in Cecconi's study is the use of attitude markers in broadside ballads and news pamphlets, with considerable attention given to headlines and proto-leads, which are traditional ‘attention-getters’ in news discourse. Adjectives like strange, unnatural and bloody contribute to the promotional aim by highlighting sensationalism, but also serve as a guide to the reader as to the distribution and the nature of contents within the text. At the same time, these markers are used to convey normative and moral ideologies, as do other features of the text types investigated, such as woodcuts and imprints.
Chapter 7, by M. Victoria Domínguez-Rodríguez and Alicia Rodríguez-Álvarez, explores persuasive strategies in prefatory matters of a very specific text type, i.e. seventeenth-century midwifery treatises (‘“All which I offer with my own experience”: An approach to persuasive advertising strategies in the prefatory matter of 17th-century English midwifery treatises’). Although medical writing in general acquired popularity in the period examined, midwifery treatises in particular were greatly expanding their readership, since the inclusion of this area of expertise within the competences of a physician was a relatively recent development in the seventeenth century. The authors show the frequent appeal to logos, ethos and pathos in these prefatory texts, which prominently include evaluative language to stress the authoritativeness of the treatise or its trustworthiness, as well as different forms of praise. According to the authors, these messages could be addressed to prospective buyers, rather than to those who had already purchased the book. Although the examples in the chapter are very interesting, it is not immediately obvious whether these strategies are specific to the text type investigated, as they could easily be applied to other subcategories of the genre ‘scientific treatise’.
The introduction of the printing press radically changed reading habits and quickly boosted readership in Early Modern times. Chapter 8, ‘“I write not to expert practitioners, but to learners”: Perceptions of reader-friendliness in early modern printed books’, by Hanna Salmi, explores the concept of ‘reader friendliness’ in seventeenth-century printed books through the analysis of metadiscoursal comments in a heterogeneous corpus of Early Modern British and American prose texts. The author refers to several functional models and provides interesting insights about the way in which text-producers employ meta-comments (conveyed through a wide range of rhetorical figures) to guide their readership through the text. These meta-comments range from commercial indicators, e.g. concerning the affordability of the text, to expressions that praise the texts in terms of clarity, richness of apparatus, and explanatory value. Although the sample used is admittedly not very large, it covers several text types, and the methodology employed looks very promising.
In chapter 9, Mari-Liisa Varila also looks at meta-comments, but focuses on the ways in which book producers helped the reader by illustrating text-organisation in early sixteenth-century printed texts (‘Book producers’ comments on text-organisation in early 16th-century English printed paratexts’). Compared to the previous chapter, and although it employs Genette's and Hyland's models in similar ways to other chapters, chapter 9 is even more interesting because it goes further back in time to a period in which printing was a newer, and therefore less familiar, communicative channel. The focus on book production is also interesting, since it shifts away from the authorial comments analysed in other chapters and is centred, instead, on the physical features of the book and on printing as a commercial enterprise. Title pages and prefaces provide interesting material to illustrate how the value and usefulness of the text are highlighted, but also how the organisation of the text is presented through several discoursal practices.
Part III of the volume comprises three chapters focusing on formal and material aspects of paratext. Chapter 10, ‘Paratextual features in 18th-century medical writing: Framing contents and expanding the text’, by Elisabetta Lonati, looks at eighteenth-century medical writings, which often feature indexes, appendixes and glosses, apart from tables of contents and other paratextual material. In addition to the notion of paratext, the author fruitfully employs the idea of transtextuality in order to account for the ways in which a text is made to communicate with other texts, thus contributing to genre cohesion (Mirenayat & Soofastaei Reference Mirenayat and Soofastaei2015). Particularly interesting are the findings on topic groupings in tables of contents and indexes, which provide taxonomies (of diseases, medications etc.), while also expressing authorial views on the field – grouping and labelling can be an expression of stance as much as overt evaluative language.
In chapter 11, ‘Recuperating Older Scots in the early 18th century’, Jeremy Smith starts from the notion of community of practice, which is more and more frequently and fruitfully employed in textual studies, to investigate Scottish writers of the Enlightenment period. The spelling conventions displayed in their poems and essays, as well as some grammatical markers, reveal traces of Older Scots and can be described as reflected practices that stand in accordance to their professional and ideological stance. An important part of their intellectual position and of their forming a community of practice was ‘reconstituting the dignity of Scots’, and thus they used every means to support this heritage language.
The final chapter, by Colette Moore, focuses on the elements of what Genette called peritext and applies information studies (at the crossroads between syntax and semantics) to medieval texts (‘Paratext, information studies, and Middle English manuscripts’). The visual elements in some of the fifteenth-century Brut manuscripts, in particular, offer evidence for peritextual guidance through the text, be it different ink colours or paragraph marks, creating textual subdivisions and conveying structural information at a time when writing tended to be continuous on the page and such subdivisions were not as clearly marked as they are now.
In conclusion, the book constitutes an interesting mix of quite diverse case studies, which nonetheless manage to stay coherent to the overall theme of the book by employing quite similar theoretical models even though they explore different perspectives. The collection proves that Genette's model, integrated with more recently developed frameworks, can still be very useful, besides showing a fruitful application of theories born to be applied to literary texts to a wide range of non-literary texts of different epochs. Precisely because of the recurrence of numerous references, however, it would have been useful to have a unified bibliography, especially for secondary sources, or at least an index of names, in order to facilitate reference retrieving. This is possibly the only element missing in a book that is otherwise very rich and very elegant, not least because of the inclusion of several colour illustrations, which are particularly important when discussing the formal features of manuscript pages. The book reads well and will certainly be an important stepping stone for future scholars engaging in further expanding this recent field of studies.
