Investigating the Vestibule of the Text: Paratext
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The paratext is understood to include the peripheral features of text such as the title page, endpapers, chapter titles and illustrations. Gérard Genette describes it as ‘a “vestibule” that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back.’ The metaphor effectively highlights the dynamic, synchronic nature of paratext and text which, Genette suggests, is a means of organising literature. However, the paratext, he argues, is not only a zone of ‘transition’ but also for ‘transaction.’ Firstly, this chapter looks at the paratext in terms of its function as transition. Since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, children’s literature has recognised the interplay of text and paratext as significant. The paratext influences how the narrative unfolds and how readers/viewers approach the text, beginning where their attention is drawn. Through selected children’s books, this chapter explores the transitional function of paratext, that is, the ways in which the paratext draws readers across the ‘vestibule’ into the ‘house’ of the book. Secondly, it is argued that the paratext involves transaction where the text is culturally specific. It transacts with its readership to ensure that it recognises and enjoys the time and place, the chronotope, of the text. A selection of children’s texts spanning a century of publications will be explored to consider how their paratexts serve as ‘instruments of cultural translation’ at various periods in history and in specific locations.