SOURCE: “Ronsard's Pretext For Paratexts: The Case of the Franciade,” in SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, No. 56, 1988, pp. 29-41.

In the following essay, Rigolot examines Ronsard's theory of poetic mimesis as it is expressed in the prefaces to the Franciade.

“I could find no more excellent subject than this one”

Ronsard, Preface to the `Franciade' (1572)

There has been much discussion in modern criticism (at least of late) of what is now commonly referred to as the paratext, that is, to paraphrase Gérard Genette's Palimpsestes, a number of signals (titles, prefaces, postfaces, footnotes, epigraphs, illustrations, etc.) which form the entourage of the text and, at the same time, constitute a major locus for the conditioning process of potential readers.¹ In taking the prefaces of the Franciade as my object of study I intend neither to examine the theory of the heroic poem or epic—it...