The function of authorial paratexts for the production of authorship

The term paratexts in general describes all texts that make a text become a book. This includes for example title and name of the author, notes of the publisher, motto, fore- and afterword (peritexts), but also advertisements, interviews or preprints (epitexts). Among the scientific community, paratexts are often declared as secondary or even parasitic elements of literary communication, but at the same time they are attributed to an authors work in major editions, which in turn makes the paratexts part of the literary canon. The proposed research project undertakes for the first time an exemplary analysis of the ambivalent function of auctorial paratexts in the german-speaking region. The focus should hereby lie on historical periods in which literary discourses [] [can] only be received, if they bear the function of the author (Michel Foucault). The basic hypothesis is that paratexts first of all play an important role for the positioning of the author within the literary field. Furthermore, this is assumed to be valid for all kinds of paratexts, including a motto chosen by the author as well as the answers of authors to surveys published in magazines. It can therefore be deduced, that paratexts over the course of a long process of modernization grew farther and farther apart from the physical book. In the Early Modern Age, authors used forewords for various strategies of dedication, but as early as 1800 a differ- entiation can be observed: On the one hand, fore- and afterwords remain an important tool of literary communication and image building, while on the other hand, paratexts are outsourced into the prolif- erative magazines and newspapers and are in consequence linked to the strategies of popularization and personalization of periodical journalism. This development reaches its peak in the media diversi- fied Modern Age of the 20th century where the growing numbers of diverse paratexts and their impli- cations for the aesthetics of reception and of media pave the way for future novel projects like Wolf Haas Das Wetter vor 15 Jahren (2006), in which a paratext, to be more precise: an interview with an author transforms into a novel. This text however does not figure within the criteria of the announced project. Instead, it aims to deliver basic research about the development and function of auctorial par- atexts for the enactment of authorship between the time-periods of the Early Modern Age and the Modern Age without claiming historical completeness. However, the project emphasizes a founded literary-historical and exemplary approach with in-depth analysis of theoretical categories such as work or author which will try to answer questions regarding taxonomy and intertextual relations within the literary field.

The project Zur Funktion auktorialer Paratexte für die Inszenierung von Autorschaft analysed the interdependencies of literary works and the auctorial communication about them, which includes Paratexts and their functions. The effect on the public perception generated by these Paratexts was explored in two exemplary periods of German literature that established paradigmatic concepts of authorship. These studies which led to two extensive monographs were complemented with case studies about specific topics. The monographs explore the concept of the Paratext that has been introduced into the scientific discourse by Gérard Genette in 1987 not only as a means of depicting intertextual relationships but as a tool for describing modern authorship itself. In particular the Epitext in periodic publications is hereby focused upon. Therefore one of the studies analyses auctorial Paratexts from around 1800 and the other one explores such texts in the Classical Modernism of the 20th century. In light of the various different forms of Epitext and the specific epistemological interest of the project the concept of the Paratext has been adapted to fit the requirements of modern authorship that since the Early Modern Age has transformed from an art based on the application of poetic rules and laws to an aesthetic expression of individual quality. The most important change to Genettes theory is that the Paratext is now not only viewed as a general commentary to one specific work of an author but to be put in relation to the whole body of work (uvre) of an individual. Around 1800 periodic journals were established as the most important place to comment, explain and judge literary works and even self-recensions were common. The practices and types of authorship during this period have since been integrated in the literary discourse and are today paradigmatic concepts. In the Classic Modernism of the 20th century these practices were extended and used much more self-consciously. That is why these two exemplary periods have been chosen as research topics. Both monographs are going to be published in 2018 and whereas the analysis of Paratexts around 1800 highlights the importance of paratextual (self-)commentary for the self-conception and identity of authors which are fundamental for todays paradigmatic concepts of writing and literacy, the examination of paratextual communication in the Classical Modernism focuses on the various methods and strategies of distinction between different concepts of authorship. The projects goals are therefore twofold: First of all the important discourse about the constitution of authorship is expanded upon and second of all the attention of the scientific community is directed towards the fundamental role of Paratexts for any form of literary communication.