Paratextuality of the author’s dedication: peritext vs epitext

Abstract

The article deals with the concept of paratext which came into our awareness due to its introduction and further research by Gérard Genette, who subdivided paratext into two categories: peritext and epitext. The focus is on one of the paratextual elements, dedication, its pragmatic, structural and stylistic peculiarities, found in Danielle Steel’s nine novels issued by Corgi Books publishing company. Although numerous studies have explored paratext and its components, there is a noticeable gap in the analysis of dedications. Moreover, none of these studies focus on contemporary romance, adding a unique perspective to the current research. From the pragmatic viewpoint, the individuals (both humans and animals) referred to in dedications play a role of addressees, participants in the communicative situation, alongside with the ‘producer’ (the author) and the third party (the reader). According to the findings of the present study, D. Steel's dedications have a certain structure, and exhibit a notably personal and emotional tone, characterized by the use of figurative language. This is achieved through various rhetorical devices such as epithets, metaphors, hyperboles, parallelism, gradation, and similar linguistic techniques. Thoroughly examining the empirical data allowed us to substantiate our hypothesis that dedications encompass characteristics from both paratextual categories, namely peritext and epitext. Viewed as the former, dedication is situated in immediate proximity to the main text within the same volume. However, in terms of the latter, this paratextual element can be fully understood by the reader only via information included in Danielle Steel’s blog, interviews and suchlike materials, which are not physically connected to the book and exists externally.