About this book
What is a paratext, and where can we find it in a Roman text? What kind of space does a paratext occupy, and how does this space relate to the text and its contexts? How do we interpret Roman texts 'paratextually'? And what does this approach suggest about a work's original modes of plotting meaning, or the assumptions that underpin our own interpretation?These questions are central to the conceptual and practical concerns of the volume, which offers a synoptic study of Roman paratextuality and its exegesis within the broad sphere of Roman studies. Its contributions, which span literary, epigraphic and visual culture, focus on a wide variety of paratextual features - e.g. titles and inter-titles, prefaces, indices, inscriptions, closing statements, decorative and formalistic details - and other paratextual phenomena, such as the frames that can be plotted at various intersections of a text's formal organization.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title
- Title page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: approaches to Roman paratextuality
- 1 Crossing the threshold: Genette, Catullus and the psychodynamics of paratextuality
- 2 Starting with the index in Pliny
- 3 The topography of the law book: common structures and modes of reading
- 4 Cicero’s capita
- 5 Tarda solacia: liminal temporalities of Statius’ prose prefaces
- 6 Intertitles as deliberate misinformation in Ammianus Marcellinus
- 7 Paratextual perspectives upon the SC de Pisone patre
- 8 Paratext and intertext in the Propertian poetry book
- 9 Pictorial paratexts: floating figures in Roman wall painting
- 10 The paratext of Amores 1: gaming the system
- 11 “Sealing” the book: the sphragis as paratext
- 12 Paraintertextuality: Spenser’s classical paratexts in The Shepheardes Calender
- 13 Modern covers and paratextual strategy in Ovidian elegy
- Bibliography
- Index of ancient literary sources
- General Index