ABSTRACT
As a paratext the preface is ‘what enables a text to become a book’ (Genette, 1; Derrida 2004, 3-65). According to Genette, paratexts are characterized by their generative power: they generate the books they are an integral part of (Meißner, 2), and they set the parameters which are fundamental to any reading experience (cf. Genette, 2).1 The preface, in particular, which is very often a site of theoretical self-reflections, is a medium that transmits a message which does not only refer to and discuss questions concerning (the medium of) literature or the literary, but defines and even generates it. The French title of Genette’s study of paratexts is, of course, Seuils, and the metaphor of the threshold is central to the conceptualization of the paratext:
If the paratext in general and the preface in particular generate the book, they do so in the process of mediating between various different systems or entities: the
extratextual and the core text, the world beyond the book and the world within the book, as well as between the text and its reader, the author and the reader, and the author and the text.
