Meanings
plural peritexts
- literary theoryImages and textual elements which surround, or are secondary to, the main body of a published work, such as an introduction, notes, front covers, etc.
The main work is not the translation at all, but Nabokov's appropriation of it through his inflated peritext.
2011, David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, Penguin, published 2012, page 1431 more example
Using a narrower focus (the reception of the oeuvre of just two writers, Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, who wrote as a team), the approach is literary and the perspective unusual, the editional segments at issue are not so much the texts themselves as their accompanying materials, or peritexts.
2011, Miranda Beaven Remnek, Miranda Remnek, The Space of the Book, page 252
Origin
By surface analysis, peri- + text.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
peritext. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritext
“peritext.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritext. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “peritext,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritext.
Source: peritext on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.