ABSTRACT
Marginal texts are no longer of marginal importance. Recent critics have increasingly been alert to the semiotic value of the entire Renaissance book, and not just the previously privileged authorial text. The path I chart essentially begins with the application of formalist strategies of coping with genre and recognition, applied to pages which traditional formalism would not consider to be literary. Upon the basis of this work, some further exploration of the subtlety of reader-text relationship will be made in reference to the theoretical work of Iser, Foucault, and Althusser. Despite the increasing attention that liminal pages are receiving, the fundamental idea of the present study is still quite unconventional, and some definitions are in order.
