Book producers’ comments on text-organisation in early 16th-century English printed paratexts
: Varila Mari-Liisa
: Peikola Matti, Bös Birte
: Amsterdam
: 2020
: The Dynamics of Text and Framing Phenomena. Historical approaches to paratext and metadiscourse in English
: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series
: 317
: 209
: 229
: 978-9-02-720788-3
: 978-9-02-726055-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.317.09var
: https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.317
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/50044955
This chapter focuses on book producers' metadiscourse related to text-organisation in 16th-century English printed paratexts. Paratexts offered authors, translators, and printers a convenient space for instructing the reader in navigating the contents of the book at hand. Choices related to text-organisation were occasionally highlighted on the title-page and described in more detail in prefaces or letters to the reader. In this chapter, I examine title-pages and prefaces to find out how book producers justified and clarified their methods of structuring text and information and whether text-organisation was used as a selling point in the early period of print in England.