Τίτλοι διηγημάτων-Τίτλοι κεφαλαίων: Στοιχεία θεωρίας και παραδειγματική εφαρμογή

Abstract

As continuation of my previous article on “Titles of Novels”, published in issue 22, I present here a study on, first, the titles of short stories (and of the corresponding collections) and, second,the titles of the chapters in novels. First of all, and according to Hoek, the titles of short-story collections should be, in general, more precise, more relevant and more typical, with regard to their relation to their co-text; that is, they should “signify” the content of this last with greater clarity. The titles of each of the short stories, for their part,frequently differ from the titles of novels with regard to their more general paratextual function. So, they are examined here with respect to their syntactical form, their direct or indirect location within the co-text and the issue of “who speaks”in these. Last, the internal titles of the chapters in novels differ from the general ones in two main points: first, their existence is by no means essential, and second, if the recipients of the internal titles are not limited only to the “regular” readers of each work, then we have to accept that they encompass also those who when flicking through a book cast an eye over the table of contents.However, internal and general titles certainly also have many points in common, and perhaps the most important of these is their anaphoric/reminding or, conversely,cataphoric/announcingvalue.These terms coined by Genette correspond to the more specialist terms of Hoek: anaphoricand cataphoric referentiality (référence anaphorique,cataphorique), which have been defined and used in our aforesaid article on the titles of novels. On the other hand, the position of the titles of chapters is particularly characteristic of the uncertain and marginal placement of the peritextual elements in general, and the situation is complicated further when their inclusion in the co-text is taken into consideration. In the present paper, the corresponding theoretical perspective of F.K.Stanzel, as formulated in his book Theory of Narrative, is also taken into account.