Titles as Beginnings before Beginnings

Abstract

Has the text perhaps begun before the beginning? Before what is usually and understandably considered the beginning? Before the opening words of a novel or line of a poem? We would usually think that the book known as Moby-Dick begins with the memorable injunction: ‘Call me Ishmael’. Yet before these words stand some others, most prominently and pertinently Moby-Dick; or The Whale. The equivocation as to what constitutes the real beginning of the work could turn on whether or not the title is considered inside or outside the work, ergon or parergon. G erard Genette considers the title one among other paratexts, one of several thresholds or seuils, as he called them in a book published by none other than Editions du Seuil. Among paratexts such as author’s name, dedication, or epigraph, the title is arguably the most crucial for the interpretation of the work, perhaps the most intimate, the most nearly organic threshold. Most scholars and people generally consider the title to be outside of the work proper but importantly related to it. Yet Genette’s figure of the threshold seems about as good as one can do to characterise this relation. ‘Threshold’ suggests that the title is not simply outside the work but on its cusp, at once inside and outside. And perhaps in some works more than others.