peritext

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noun

Images and textual elements which surround, or are secondary to, the main body of a published work, such as an introduction, notes, front covers, etc.

Scrabble 17

Meanings

nounperitext (plural peritexts)

plural peritexts

  1. 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 143
    1 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

Cite this entry
APA

peritext. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritext

MLA

“peritext.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritext. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “peritext,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritext.

Source: peritext on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.