Forms and Functions of Authorial Epitexts

The term paratext generally describes the types or elements of texts which accompany, complete or comment on a basic or main text, they predominantly belong to the authors themselves or were author- ised by them. We can differentiate between peritexts, such as prefaces, mottos or eponyms, which are medially tied to their reference text, and epitexts, such as interviews, letters or diary entries, which generally appear in material distance to the text they refer to. The research project designed in coopar- ation with the University of Siegen examines subsequently to the FWF project About the Function of Authorial Paratexts for the Production of Authorship (project number P 26723 G23; period 2014- 17), which took an exemplary close look at the time around 1800 as well at the classical modernity different forms of epitexts and their function in the German-speaking literary field of the present. This does not only imply a literary-historical shift but also the consideration of changed cultural, econimi- cal and especially medial conditions. The basic text corpus does not exclusively consist of written sources anymore as still the case in the previous project but partially also of audiovisual material. Because authorial epitexts, such as interviews or literature prize speeches, have been available on YouTube and other channels for quite a while. Not only with regard to media technology can we as- sume that forms and functions of authorial epitexts currently differentiate, with the epitextual spectrum therefore extending and significantly gaining importance for the contemporary German-speaking liter- ature, while it evidently cannot be reduced to its notorious role of an embellishment. It rather has to be questioned how far the literary work increasingly offers occasion and setting for the epitextual stag- ing of authorship. Examining these interrelations exemplary in a theory-led and material-saturated way on the basis of a clearly defined, German source corpus is the target of our project which we have structured in three work packages for this purpose. Beside the epitexts initially voiced orally in the context of author readings and literature prize award ceremonies, the focus also lies on the proliferat- ing variants of fabricated epitexts, which make paratextuality part of an aesthetic game, which sur- passes the borders of text and paratext productively at the same time marking them anew.

Within the framework of our project, the current forms and functions of epitexts were systematically investigated for the first time and analysed exemplarily. To this end, we have selected three types from the numerous variants of epitext that are particularly symptomatic of the literary field of the present day: 1. performative epitexts (such as utterances by authors at readings). 2. ritualised epitexts (such as acceptance speeches at literary awards ceremonies). 3. fictious epitexts (such as interviews that were never conducted). With this division into three concrete work packages, the first of which was carried out at the University of Siegen and the last two at the University of Innsbruck, we were at the same time able to more clearly contour the material on which we based our research and still examine a broad spectrum of epitexts, whereby despite all the diversity of proliferating epitexts, two constant features could be worked out: Functionality and authorial binding. The latter essentially refers to the coupling of the epitext to the instance of authorship, which legitimises it and at the same time takes responsibility for it, the constitutive circumstance that precisely the relationship between text and epitext is not to be understood as an essentialist or static one, but as a functional and context-dependent one. In doing so, we were able to show that and how epitexts play a central role in the literary field of the present day, are increasingly in demand and are by no means only bound to the written form. After completing the project, we can even state that the institutions concerned with contemporary literature have for some time been increasingly creating occasions in which epitexts are produced, for example when authors give interpretative statements about their work and/or themselves at readings or literary awards ceremonies. We have examined precisely these two scenes of literary mediation in detail in the work packages on performative and ritualised epitexts. If, on the other hand, epitexts appear in a fictional setting or entirely as fiction (e.g. fictitious interviews in novel form), they also self-reflexively make the functioning of epitexts in general visible and expose them with regard to authorial staging practices as well as the mechanisms of the literature business in particular. By concentrating on epitexts, we were able to show paratext research, which tends to reduce the field either to peritexts or to extend it to non-authorial texts such as literary criticism and thus make it subject to conceptual and conceptual vagueness, not only new but also systematically well-founded paths. Principal Investigator: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Wegmann (Universität Innsbruck)