Paratextual Elements For Charles Dickens’s Novel David Copperfield As Published In Three Different Editions

Paratextual Elements For Charles Dickens’s Novel David Copperfield As Published In Three Different Editions

Paratextual elements for Charles Dickens’s novel   David Copperfield as published in three different editions

A comparative view of the following editions:

  1. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, With an Introduction and Notes by Jeremy Tambling, Revisted Edition; (paperback) London: Penguin Books, 2004

  2. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield,   With an Introduction by David Gates, (paperback) New York: The Modern Library, 2000   (Amazon.com Look Inside)

  3. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield,   translated into Romanian by Ioan ComÈ™a, 2 Vols.,(hardcover),   BucureÈ™ti, RAO International Publishing Company, 2003

                            A paratextual element, at least if it consists of a message that has taken on material form, necessarily has a   location that can be situated in relation to the location of the text   itself. Within the same volume are such elements as the title or the preface and sometimes elements inserted into the interstices of the text, such as chapter titles or certain notes. I will give the name peritext to this first spatial category   [....]. The distanced elements are all those messages that, at least originally, are located outside the book, generally with the help of the media (interviews, conversations) or under cover of private communications (letters, diaries, and others). This second category is what, for lack of a betterword, I call epitext. (Gerard Genette, Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation, pp 4-5)

      Considering the large period of time from the first publishing of the book, be it as a full novel or in series form, it is obvious that modern reader can not be enticed with elements of epitext, for even more obvious reasons: no matter how useful or attractive it may look, an interview with Mr Charles Dickens would simply transcede the boundaries of reality. Therefore, for Mr. Dickens’s, as for any classical and canonical writer of the previous centuries, the editors can only rely a) on the awareness...