Le paratexte comme élément révélateur

Abstract

The paratext as a revealing element

The paratext and paratextual elements are still under study although some authors such as Genette, Mitterand have rigorously demonstrated their importance in the text of stories, novels, short stories, etc. It is only in recent years that the surroundings of the text have been analyzed and that we discover with these elements the richness and the pleasure of the text, as Roland Barthes likes to say. The title and subtitle, the cover, the epigraph, the dedication, the preface and finally the titles of the chapters play the role of clutch and triggering of a possible reading.
The paratext has been almost unrecognized if not ignored, whereas today it occupies a dominating place. It is a call that every author makes to his reader. In recent years, this expanded textual space has been the subject of numerous investigations that have resulted in fruitful debates. Title, subtitles, preface, notes, epigraph, dedications, and many other more or less visible surrounds are echoes of the text that any author explicitly or implicitly makes available to the reader who must know how to decode before any reading and who will make it easier for him to choose the book. These paratextual elements are the signature of the author that any informed or uninformed reader must know how to decipher for the understanding and analysis of a text.