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Paratext refers to additional text or reference material added to an author’s published work, such as book covers, author profiles, introductions, and editor’s notes. It helps orient readers but does not contribute to the narrative. Hypotext is a related term referring to source material or context for a text.
Paratext is any additional text or other reference material that is added to an author’s published work. One of the most common ways to think of this type of material is in the form of various elements that publishers include in the average book, such as a book cover, an inside or back cover description, and an author profile. Other types of extraneous additions to book pages are also considered paratext. All of these elements are considered paratext because they are external reference materials that help frame the printed manuscript within the book, but without directly contributing to the content.
Other examples of this type of reference text include introductions or prefaces by people other than the author. Many books include these materials in the opening pages, where some other writer may restate the author’s work, provide literary criticism, or engage in some other type of introduction. The editor’s notes can also be considered examples of this type of reference text.
In terms of their semantic role, elements of type paratext help orient someone who is reading a written work. A key feature of these external text types is that they do not contribute to this single narrative which is a common feature of an authored book. The narrative is the story of the book, which many authors keep from the first page to the last. Within this narrative or story, most professionally trained authors maintain a particular perspective, an omniscient third-person perspective, or the perspective of a character or set of characters. In nonfiction, the narrative is often from the author’s point of view, in the first person.
In contrast to the author’s carefully maintained narrative point of view, the paratext breaks the narrative, looking at it from the outside. There are many purposes for this type of additional text beyond the introductory role mentioned above. Other types of reference text can provide essential, fiction-related facts, tell the reader about the author’s background or experience, or otherwise set the stage for a fiction or non-fiction book.
These types of reference categories are also closely related to others. One that has become popular in postmodern authorial analysis is the hypotext. Hypotext, which is attributed to the European writer Gerard Genette, is a darker synonym of paratext; both of these words refer to source material, or context of similar orientation, for a text, although some academics may make their own differentiations between these terms.
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