“Titology,” a term first coined in 1977 by literary critic Harry Levin, is the field of literary studies that focuses on the significance of a title in establishing the thematic developments of the pages that follow. While the term has been used in the literary community for thirty years, this book presents for the first time a thoroughly developed theoretical discussion on the significance of the title as a foundation for scholarly criticism.
Though Maiorino acknowledges that many titles are superficial and “indexical,” there exists a separate and more complex class of titles that do much more than simply decorate a book’s spine. To prove this argument, Maiorino analyzes a wide range of examples from the modern era through high modernism to postmodernism, with writings spanning the globe from Spain and France to Germany and America. By examining works such as Essais, The Waste Land, Ulysses, and Don Quixote, First Pages proves the power of the title to connect the reader to the thematic, cultural, and literary context of the writing as a whole. Much like a façade to a building, the title page serves as the frontispiece of literature, a sign that offers perspective and demands interpretation.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Frontispiece of Literature
Modern
1. At the Top of the Page and Below the Frame: Arcadia,Concert Champêtre, and Pastoral Titles
2. The Title’s Novelistic Birthmark: La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y sus fortunas y adversidades
3. From Title to Genre: Essaying at the Threshold of Form
Modernist
4. Title Translated into Title: Ulysses
5. The Waste Land: The Archaeology of Titles
6. Off the Page and onto the Stage: Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore
7. Between Expectation and Explanation: Waiting for Godot
8. The Dustbin of Titles: From “The Literature of Exhaustion” to “The Literature of Replenishment”
Postmodern
9. “La biblioteca de Babel”: The Archititle in a Library of Titles
10. Cervantine First Pages: The Inadequacies of Retitling
11. The Picaresque and the Quixotic: An Adventure in Titology
12. Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore: Et cetera, Et cetera
13. After the End of Art: The Obituary of Titles
14 The Literature of Titles
Notes
Index
“Professor Maiorino’s First Pages, sparkling with witty aperçus, offers the first systematic and genuinely comparative study of ‘titology’ in literature. . . . The reader will never again look at a literary title with the same innocence as before.”
