Reader meets book, textual engagements and the genres of liminality in the English Renaissance

grantor: University of TorontoThe purpose of this thesis is to explore how various kinds of books were marketed to readers in the early modern London book trade, especially between 1580 and 1620. I argue that publishers presented texts with a colourful range of paratextual devices, and that these devices allow insight for us today not only into the book trade but also into the psychological dynamics involved in contemporary reading. I suggest that the sort of readerly engagements which Iser and Fish find in canonical texts can also be found in the paratexts of more ordinary early modern books. I begin by situating my study within the current critical landscape. This thesis joins the trend in scholarship which has been called "New Textualism" by examining a set of pages which has never received comprehensive aesthetic attention. Next, it surveys the most important genres of the early modern paratext, and the metaphors which were used to advertise books. It goes on to explore ways in which some authors of poetry, drama and fiction observed the genres and dynamics of the paratext. Once we become aware of how important these pages were and what their function was, we can detect subtle allusions to prefatory genres in contemporary literature. The first part of the thesis thus demonstrates that front matter is literary, and the second half shows that literary texts often echo front matter in ways that have gone unnoticed. Put together, these two sections of the thesis undermine received notions of what a literary text is.Ph.D