Historiographic Paratext 89

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Spiel Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

spiel Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

Jg.. 30 (2011), Heft 1

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Jg. 30 (2011), Heft 1

Auf dem Weg zu einer Narratologie der „Geschichtsschreibung“ Towards a Historiographic Narratology

Herausgegeben von / edited by Julia Nitz (Halle) & Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Altoona)

Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

Herausgeber dieses Heftes / Editors of this issue: Julia Nitz & Sandra Harbert Petrulionis

Inhalt / Contents SPIEL 30 (2011), H. 1

Julia Nitz, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Halle/Altoona) Towards a Historiographic Narratology: Résumé 1

Penelope Frangakis (Athens) The Role of the Historian as an Author/Narrator: The Case of Herodotus’s The Histories 7

Stephan Jaeger (Winnipeg) Poietic Worlds and Experientiality in Historiographic Narrative 29

Hanna Meretoja (Turku) An Inquiry into Historical Experience and Its Narration: The Case of Günter Grass 51

Alun Munslow (Dodsleigh) The Historian as Author 73

Julia Nitz (Halle) In Fact No Fiction: Historiographic Paratext 89

Yair Seltenreich (Upper Galilee) Personal Diaries as Historical Narratives: Yossef Nachmani and the Galilee, 1935-1941 113

Beverley Southgate (London) “All their Feet on the Ground”?: Tidy (Hi)stories in Question 131

RUBRIC

Norbert Groeben (Heidelberg) Empirisierung (in) der Literaturwissenschaft: wissenschaftsinterne und -externe Dynamiken 151

Thomas Wilke (Halle) Mashup-Kultur und Musikvideos. Aktuelle Entwicklungen audiovisueller Auflösung und Verdichtung in Mashup-Videos 159

SPIEL 30 (2011) H. 1, 89–111 10.3726/80121_89

Julia Nitz (née Lippert) (Halle, GER)

In Fact No Fiction: Historiographic Paratext

Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht die Bedeutung und Funktion von historiographischen Paratexten für medial vermittelte Geschichte. Er legt dar, welche große Rolle Rezensionen, Trailer, Poster, Ankündigungen, Interviews und andere Formen von Werkbesprechungen für das Verständ- nis und die Bewertung von Geschichtswerken (Biographien, Fernsehdokumentationen, Aus- stellungen, Geschichtsdramen etc.) durch die jeweiligen Rezipienten spielen. Gleichzeitig wird verdeutlicht, wie mediale „Beitexte“ dieser Art die Wahrnehmung der geschichtlichen Phänomene selbst stark prägen können, und sogar stellvertretend für den eigentlichen Geschichtstext auftreten, nämlich dann, wenn zum Beispiel auf das Lesen einer Rezension zu einem historischen Spielfilm nicht das Anschauen des eigentlichen Films folgt. Die Autorin illustriert, welche entscheidende Rolle Paratexte in der Unterscheidung von Fakt und Fiktion spielen, da sie in der Regel ein Werk als z.B. Dokumentation oder Roman ankündigen. Die theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit Para- texten und ihren Funktionen zeigt auf, dass 1) Paratexte integrale Bestandteile textlicher Bedeu- tungsgenerierung sind, 2) Paratexte die Rezeption ihrer Bezugswerke über die Initiierung bestimmter kognitiver Erwartungsrahmen prägen, und 3) eine Untersuchung der Bedeutungs- stiftung von Texten innerhalb einer Gesellschaft immer auch ihre Paratexte berücksichtigen muss. Kern der Studie bildet eine funktionale Typologie der Paratexte für biographische Geschichts- werke, die paradigmatisch auf die Beiwerke zu Alan Bennetts Theaterstück The Madness of George III zur Anwendung kommt. Die Analyse der Paratexte zu Bennetts Drama illustriert, wie diese das Stück als historisch fundiertes Geschichtswerk (als Infotainment) rahmen und damit Bennetts Darstellung Georgs III und seine (fiktive) Diagnose, dass der König nicht an Wahnsinn, sondern an einer Stoffwechselkrankheit litt, fest in der kollektiven Wahrnehmung der Briten verankerten.

Introduction

George III’s behavior was often odd, but now he is deranged, rumoured to have even addressed a tree as the King of Prussia. Doctors are brought in, the government wavers and the Prince Regent takes over. This play explores the court of the mad king. […]. (Amazon 2010) This is how an Amazon review describes Alan Bennett’s theatre play, The Madness of George III, which was staged at the National Theatre in 1991 and again in 2003, and published in print by Faber and Faber (1992/1995).1 By using the present tense with “now he is deranged,” and “doctors are brought in,” the review plunges us into the events of George III’s life at the beginning of the Regency period. Such a rhetorical strategy conveys an immediacy of the historical past, and thereby creates the impression that the play brings history back to life. The notion that we are dealing with an excursion into

1 For a summary of the play, its main themes and characterization of George III see Lippert/Nitz 2010b, 147–48. 90 Julia Nitz history is further emphasised by the statement: “This play explores the court of the mad king.” The play is clearly marked as more than merely a piece of imagination; it rather poses as an inquiry into what was going on at the court of George III at a specific point in time. Finally, the review characterises George III as oddly behaved and as rumoured to talk to trees, and quite openly calls him “mad.” All in all, the commentary assesses the play as well as its main protagonist, the impersonation of a real-world historical personage, George III – king of Great Britain from 1760–1820. The review is posted on the Amazon webpage as part of the article description of the Faber and Faber edition of the drama, The Madness of George III. It also figures on the back of the actual book publication. Thus, potential customers are likely to read it before buying the book and, consequently, before perusing the drama itself. Texts such as this review, which prepare audiences for another text, are what Jonathan Gray calls “entryway paratexts” (Gray 2010, 18). They raise expectations as to what, for example, a novel, drama, TV-show, or film is going to be like and construct early frames for reception, such as genre, tone, and themes. Further, they help us to make sense of texts a-priori, guiding our reception and meaning-making processes. Paratexts may occur in the form of ads, previews, book or DVD-covers, trailers, posters, Internet discussion, merchandising, and fan creations, to name only the most prominent ones. According to Gray, they form [...] the streets, bridges, and trading routes of the media world, but also many of its parks, beaches, and leisure sites. They tell us about the media world around us, prepare us for that world, and guide us between its structures, but they also fill it with meaning, take up much of our viewing and thinking time, and give us the resources with which we will both interpret and discuss that world. (2010, 1) Gray is pointing out here that every media text is accompanied by “textual proliferation,” or what Genette termed “le paratext de l’œuvre” or “l’accompagnement” (Genette [1987] 2002, 7–8). Usually, such additional texts either announce the existence of the “target text,” criticize it, or, as is now most common, advertise it. By and large, in our media saturated environment, there is a need for ever more paratext if only to proclaim the actual texts’ presence in the world (cf. Gray 2010, 39). As a consequence, we need to look at texts and their textual proliferations, or, as Genette put it, their “epitexts” and “peritexts,” in order to understand how a text creates meaning in popular culture and society more generally. Such an approach that explores both text and paratext is even more vital for an understanding of historiographic texts (that purport to present some version of “real” or “authentic” truth) and of their impact on our collective effort at (re)- constructing the past. Examining the paratexts, and separating them from, the actual version of their target text’s presentation, is all the more important if we are to reach any “true” conclusion of the extent to which a historiographic text is considered historically accurate by the audience. The Amazon review quoted above is one of 30 of its kind that I located when researching The Madness of George III on the Internet, in newspapers, and in magazines. Apart from reviews I found numerous other forms of paratexts such as posters, magazine ads, interviews with the author and creative personnel on radio and TV, fan commentary on webpages, and newspaper articles discussing the play and its subsequent filmic adaptation. While some audience members may actually read the drama or watch the play In Fact No Fiction 91 or film, those who do not can still gain an idea of its contents by encountering the paratexts. For these audience members, paratexts thus stand in for Bennett’s work. As a result, paratexts on the drama/play/film may not only determine our understanding of the work but also our knowledge of its main protagonist, George III. Historiographic narratology attempts to find ways of analyzing historiographic texts with the purpose of understanding how the past is being (re)constructed and perceived by a social community at a specific point in time. Taking into consideration the enormous impact of paratexts on the reception of texts in general, and of historiographic texts and the historical phenomena they treat in particular, the inclusion of paratextual proliferations into any research on historiographic texts becomes self-evident. In this paper, I shall therefore discuss the relevance of paratextual analysis for historiographic research and examine the nature of historiographic paratexts in order to suggest methods for their systematical analysis. First, I shall explore the significance of paratexts for distinguishing between historiographic text (fact) and literary text (fiction). Second, existing theories of paratext shall be reviewed. This review will serve as a point of departure for proposing a functional typology for historio(bio)graphical paratexts.2 The final section of the article will put this typology to the test in a case study on the paratextual discourse of Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III.

The Postmodern Dogma: Fact Equals Fiction?

Nineteenth-century English philosophers of the metaphysical idealism school claimed that reality consists solely of idea or experience and that thus there can be no such thing as “objective history.”3 Since then, there has been an increasing tendency to perceive history as an “imaginary” product of the historian or the collective discourse of a group of historians at a specific point in time. E. H. Carr subsumes this philosophy of history in his famous phrase: “Before you study the history, study the historian” (Carr 1961, 54). The nineteenth and early twentieth-century idea of the historian as an empirical scientist slowly gave way to the idea of the historian as the creator of his/her subject matter. The process of narrating the past was no longer regarded as collecting, explaining, and presenting existing real-world facts (mimesis) but, rather, as constructing mere linguistic entities. The argument was, in short, that the world of language constructs the “factual” world (cf. Gossmann 1978, 30–31). Hence, no such thing as “objective history” is deter- minable, regardless of the amount of investigation into the past. This “subjective” historiographic turn, as we may term it, in time gave way to the “narrative turn.” Roland Barthes, in his essay “Le discours de l’histoire” (1967), for the first time focused the study of history writing on the study of narrative discourse and suggested that we use the same method of analysis as with fictional narrative. Barthes essentially concludes that the narration of the historical past doesn’t differ from narration whether in the epic, the novel, or the drama, and we therefore need to examine its

2 This paper represents a first step in developing research methods for historiographic paratexts. Therefore the scope is limited to a particular kind of historiographic genre, i.e. the biographical. 3 Cf. F. H. Bradley 1874. 92 Julia Nitz rhetoric rather than its relation to “the real.” Hayden White famously takes up this idea in Metahistory (1973), in which he declares: In this theory I treat historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse. Histories (and philosophies of history as well) combine a certain amount of “data,” theoretical concepts for “explaining” these data, and a narrative structure for their presentation as an icon of sets of events presumed to have occurred in times past. In addition, I maintain, they con- tain a deep structural content which is generally poetic, and specifically linguistic, in nature […]. (White 1973, ix) White then proceeds to propose a “poetics of history.” He maintains that the writing of history is a three-stage-process: 1) arrangement of events chronologically, 2) transforma- tion of chronicle into a story, and 3) explanation of story by way of “emplotment” (“en- codation of the facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot- structures,” White 1978a, 48). Importantly, White postulates that “history” in itself is never tragic or comical but is turned into a tragedy or comedy by the plot structure cho- sen to present past events. Thus, readers decode and make sense of history by recogniz- ing its “archetype”: tragedy, romance, comedy, and satire. Five years after the publication of Metahistory, White went further in Tropics of Discourse (1978) and straightforwardly equated history with fiction. Here, he states that “[t]his [emplotment] is essentially a literary, that is to say fiction-making, operation” (1978b, 85). In recent years, White’s equation of “emplotment = literary operation = fiction making” turned into what Doležel terms “the postmodern challenge” to historiography or the “radicalization of postmodern ‘metahistory,’” epitomized in the dogma of history = fiction (Doležel 2010, 15, 25). Testifying to this are recent publications by Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow, who explain in The Nature of History Reader (2004) that history is first and foremost a literary undertaking and not, as historians have long held, a science based on empirical method (1). They radically conclude: […] the possibility that not only have we to rethink “history as we have known it” along deconstructionist, postmodern lines, but that we may have come to the end of history in all of its current manifestations; that our “postmodern condition” can perhaps produce its own, non-historical acts of the imagination for us to live by which do not figure in its number any sort of recognizable history at all. (Jenkins and Munslow 2004, 2) In reaction to Jenkins and Munslow, Doležel points out that regardless of the “radicalization of postmodern ‘metahistory,’ the practicing postmodern historians remain moder- ate” (2010, 25). This is to say, they include discourse strategies of fiction-making in their work while still trying to somehow stay “true” to “what actually happened.” In this practice, they conform to the “truth-postulate” of those whom Doležel coins the “defenders of the integrity of history,” such as Paul Ricœur and Dorrit Cohn (2010, 25). Already in the 1980s and repeatedly until the year 2000, Paul Ricœur attempted to establish a clear distinction between historiographic and literary texts, i.e., between history and fiction. In his famous work Time and Narrative (Temps et recit), he clearly states that he reserves “the term ‘fiction’ for those literary creations that do not have historical narrative’s ambition to constitute a true narrative” (1984–1988, 3:191–92). By “true” he means the result of the attempt to get as close as possible to how things In Fact No Fiction 93

“actually” happened (cf. Ricœur 2002, 5, 44). Ricœur assumes that the historians contract a “truth-pact” with their readers, that is they promise a potential audience to get as close as possible to the real events in representing them. He is not saying that it is actually possible for the historian to depict the past as it truly was, but approaching the authentic past should be the historian’s goal. In short, for Ricœur the distinction between fact and fiction is one of intention. For Dorrit Cohn and Roland Barthes, however, the distinction is, rather, one of reference: 1) reference to the actual world as opposed to a fictional world, and 2) reference to the process of (re)constructing the past. Both Cohn and Barthes describe discourse elements that identify texts as “history.” Cohn discusses “peri- graphic apparatus” (1990, 782), while Barthes refers to “shifters of listening” and “shifters of organization” (1989, 128), meaning discourse markers that shed light on, for example, the source of a certain statement or the degree of its validity. Such discourse markers are, for instance, inferential and conjectural syntax, as in he must have felt angry or he possibly felt angry.4 In “Postmodern Narratives of the Past,” Lubomír Doležel implicitly if not explicitly combines Ricœur’s, Cohn’s, and Barthes’s perception of the difference between history and fiction. He regards it as […] a difference between two kinds of possible worlds, one historical, the other fictional, between two kinds of world construction, between two different relation- ships of the constructed worlds to the actual world. The historical world is a model of what actually happened, the fictional world is a construct of what could happen or could have happened. The solution of the problem of history versus fiction is not on the level of “discourse,” but on the level of “world.” (2007, 184) On the one hand, Doležel refers to the historical world as “a model of what actually happened.” In order to create such a model, the historian needs to intend to produce such a model and, in fact, to try to get as close as possible to what actually happened; otherwise it wouldn’t be a model but a deception. On the other hand, Doležel refers to “kinds of world construction,” that is to a creation process that establishes different kinds of “relationship[s] of the constructed worlds to the actual world.” Since we are talking about narrative history, the creation process would be one of narrative construction, and it is on this level that the different relationship would have to be expressed (see Cohn’s and Barthes’s discourse markers). In short, according to Doležel, history can be distinguished from fiction on both the level of intention and, at least to some degree, on (or actually by way of) the level of discourse. However, things become more complicated when historians, writers, media producers, and whoever else is participating in (re)constructing the past turn to fiction, following the radical postmodern maxim of history equals fiction. When historians freely import techniques and devices of fictional literature, isn’t the distinction then reduced to mere intention? And how then is the audience expected to determine what the producers’ intention might be? How would one know whether one is confronting history versus fiction? As Doležel himself points out, “[t]he erasure of their [fact/fiction] opposition is tantamout [sic] to (or inspired by) popular appropriations of historical fiction. Historical

4 For more information on forms of reference to the process of (re)constructing the past, see Lippert/Nitz 2009, 235–36. 94 Julia Nitz fiction is mistaken for historical representation” (2007, 181). We could argue along with Munslow, however, that since there is no (or cannot be) a distinction between fact and fiction, it is no longer valid to pretend to draw one. And we may ask ourselves whether (and why) such a bifurcation, or the pretense of one, truly matters? Why indeed should we bother trying to distinguish history from fiction? Rather than offering a theoretical debate on this subject, I am instead interested in arguing on a much more practical basis. I think I am justified in believing that common sense, history lessons, and the textual world surrounding us (documentaries, docu-drama, TV-shows, biopics) have anchored within us a “popular” understanding that there is an important difference between fact and fiction. When an author or filmmaker reports on events in the Middle East, on an automobile accident, or on events in his/her own biography, we have different expectations and modes of judgment than when somebody tells a bedtime story or when we watch a soap opera. If not the “truth” itself, we do expect at least something pertaining as close to the truth as is possible for the producer of the text. Marking an imagined version of events as true is a serious deception. In court, when testifying in a murder case for example, such a “deception” would be a crime. A TV- show, marketed as a fact-based documentary, which denied the vast (horrifying) extent of twentieth-century human trafficking and which was primarily based on hearsay and in- vented evidence in its presentation of circumstances, would be a serious deception, although not punishable by law. The same would be true for a denial of the Second World War’s Holocaust, for example. The point is that an important aspect of people’s perception of themselves, their nation, and the world surrounding them is created via an understanding of how these “phenomena” came to be, i.e. their historical genealogy. Our urge to re-construct and to remember the past stems exactly from this yearning to process and understand the here and now. Proof of this human tendency of resorting to the past in order to cope with the present is the often noted intensified turn to the past in moments of personal or national crisis. In the 1990s, for example, when Great Britain saw its national identity disrupted as a result of the final loss of Britain’s status as imperial world power and by increasing separation movements in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, the country turned its attention to its glorious past to an unprecedented extent.5 The country witnessed a boom in antique markets and fancy-dress parties – brick was back, and antiques were chic. Private and public genealogy research flourished, the preservation of sites of historic interest intensified, and the National Trust grew into the largest private membership organisation of any kind in Europe (cf. Mandler 2002, 94–96). But most remarkably, the renewed interest in the past was displayed in the entertainment media, in numerous costume dramas, in the Antiques Roadshow (Arthur Negus), and in biopics and biographies of famous historical person- ages. It can be concluded that when we are ultimately deceived in believing fiction to be fact, we are likewise misled in our (re)construction of the world and in our understanding of what and who we are. “Fiction” posing as “fact” leads to myth-making rather than to fact-finding. Such “fictions” do not enhance our historical knowledge but produce myth (cf. also Doležel 2007, 181).

5 Cf. P. Bennett 1996; Cannadine 2002; Evans 2002; Mandler 2002. In Fact No Fiction 95

Ricœur early on disapproved of exclusively semiotic or narratological analyses of historiographic texts, and he emphasized the relevance of the reception context (2002, 42). I would like to argue here that it is first and foremost paratexts that determine how recipients approach a text, – either as history or fiction – and it is with paratextual discourse that we have to approach this distinction.

Theories of Paratext

In the to date most recent study on media paratext, Jonathan Gray provides the following thesis: A “paratext” is both “distinct from” and alike – or, I will argue, intrinsically part of – the text [sic]. The book’s thesis is that paratexts are not simply add-ons, spinoffs, and also-rans: they create texts, they manage them, and they fill them with many of the meanings that we associate with them. (2010, 6) Gray’s thesis that paratext forms part of the text itself, and, to a large extent, determines its meaning, is based on a particular understanding of what “text” is. He aligns himself here with theorists such as Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Wolfgang Iser, and Stanley Fish. Roland Barthes, as early as 1971, differentiates between the work that “can be held in the hand” and text that “is held in language” and “only exists in the movement of a discourse.” According to Barthes, text is “experienced only in an activity of production” (Barthes [1971] 1977, 157). One of the most influential poststructural theorists, Julia Kristeva, agrees with Barthes that text “is not a finished production, but a continuous ‘productivity’” (1980, 36). In this context, production process also includes consumption. It is assumed that a text comes into being only in the process of consumption, in which each individual “reader” brings his or her experience to the text and thus “produces” a particular meaning. Barthes also talks here of “practical collaboration” ([1971] 1977, 162, 163). Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish, concentrating especially on the reading process, also confirm that text is of an active nature, experienced by readers/viewers in the act of consumption (cf. Iser 1978, 112; 1980, 56 and Fish 1980, 74, 83). From this theory/phenomenology of text, Gray concludes that “[t]exts make sense because of our past textual experience, literacy, and knowledge” (2010, 31). This is to say, we make sense of/create texts partly through the frames offered by other texts that constrain our reading and guide our interpretation (32). Moreover, Gray argues that intertexts and paratexts set up reading filters and create interpretative guidelines (34). Gérard Genette in Seuils (1987), his significant study on paratext, proclaims that a text cannot exist without paratext since it is only the paratext that offers the text as a communicative unit for public reception by, for example, providing a title and linking it to an author (Genette 1997, 1–3). In fact, we could say that according to Genette a text is turned into a work (in Barthes’s sense of the term) via its paratext: “For us, accordingly, the paratext is what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more generally, to the public” (1). Paratext is the threshold through which the audience has to pass in order to approach the text and thus is unavoidable. Film and literary studies has especially taken up Genette’s idea of paratext and further developed 96 Julia Nitz this concept. In general, scholars in these fields observe two main tendencies. On the one hand, they attempt to free paratexts from their dependence on “authorship.” Genette believes that in general, paratext is “characterized by authorial intention and assumption of responsibility” (1997, 2). He argues that, especially concerning peritexts that form part of the text’s materiality, authors or their partners (editors, etc.) should be held responsible since they authorize the contents and the overall message of these paratexts. On the other hand, scholars aim to make paratextual theory applicable across various media.6 Two works that most prominently contribute to the resolution of these two tasks are Paratexte in Literatur, Film, Fernsehen (Paratexts in Literature, Film and Television) (Kreimeier and Stanitzek 2004), and Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media (Wolf and Bernhart 2006), in which the authors establish paratext as a form of metacommunication. New concepts that contribute to this discussion are especially developed in Wolf’s and Bernhart’s volume (2006), they free paratext from the dominance of the author/ sender and anchor it within a cognitive reception process applicable across media boundaries.7 In the introduction to the volume, Wolf defines text as a cognitive process of interaction in which producers provide “cues” or “keyings” that activate specific cognitive frames or patterns (Wolf 2006, 6). For example, when we confront a text that is announced as autobiography on the book cover (cue) the cognitive frame of /autobiography/ is activated. Part of this frame (acquired via experience in media consumption) is a first- person narrator, the identity of author and narrator, and a personal perspective. Another obvious cue would be that if people were able to fly in a film, it would be marked as /fantasy/ (frame), which we will not be very likely to question. As with all cognitive approaches, we are faced with the dilemma that each individual may decode cues differ- ently. However, as Wolf’s research has shown, it seems valid to assume a considerable degree of overlap between elements of encoding (cues) and decoding (frames): […] the sender’s framing activity will be focused on potential recipients and manifest itself in framing markers, while the recipient’s framing process, which has found some attention in frame theory, is not an autonomous process either but to a large extent determined by textual framings, which the recipient is supposed to decode. Moreover, it is as much influenced, e.g. by contextual cultural framings, as the sender’s encoding activity. Thus, (con-)textual framings are the legitimate core of research dealing with medial framings. (Wolf 2006, 17) Wolf here aligns himself with Erving Goffman’s theory of an isomorphism between the frame of perception and its organization: The elements and processes he [the individual] assumes in his reading of the activity often are ones that the activity itself manifests […]. A correspondence or isomorphism is thus claimed between perception and the organization of what is perceived […]. (Goffman [1974] 1986, 26) Goffman’s Frame Analysis was published in 1974, ten years prior to Genette’s Seuils. In this study, Goffman describes “principles of organization which govern events,” which

6 Genette doesn’t explicitly restrict his concept of paratext to literary texts, but his discussion and examples refer only to belle lettres. 7 Wolf and Bernhart integrate Genette’s theory of paratext within Erving Goffman’s frame theory of interaction ([1974] 1986). In Fact No Fiction 97 he calls “frames” (10) and which he defines as “implicit rules that by ‘defining the situation,’ shape the meanings generated within it” (xiii). Basically, Goffman attempts to point out (implicit) rules that govern our everyday social interactions. He claims that certain situations, such as a conversation between a student and a professor, are organ- ized by socially acquired codes of behavior: in the student-professor situation a hierar- chical order in which the professor offers a seat and leads the discussion is automatically established. A theater performance can serve as a further example of such situational framings. The theater house (or, rather, the setting, i.e. stage and audience) marks the situation as a performance – thus with the “gong,” the audience goes silent and watches what it assumes to be a “pretense” and not “real” events. In accordance with Wolf and Goffman it can be assumed that producers and consumers of a particular “interpretative community” (same social and medial context) share cognitive frames as well as an understanding of their textual actualization. That similarity is why these cues and frames seem to be the appropriate objects of research when we examine texts and the way they produce meaning. What Wolf suggests is that we focus on the particular “cues” within paratexts to decode which kind of frames they activate for the reception of the “target text”8 they accompany. If the book title, for example, reads A History of England, the cue “history” will invoke the frame, the cognitive script, of /history/, and thus, readers will expect a factual representation of the past and read accordingly. So in case people with wings should appear, the reader will be less prone to take these figures as signs of fantasy but will look for other explanations. Wolf proceeds to develop a “typology of framings” for “peritexts” or “framing borders,” as he calls them (2006, 15). He categorizes paratextual cues according to their function into: text-centred (elements that are direct interpretation guides; as for example the subtitle “autobiography”), context-centred (cues that posit the work in the cultural space, for example, in relation to other texts), recipient-centred (cues that aim at influenc- ing the behaviour of recipients as are most obvious in cooking-recipes), and sender- centred (cues that hint at intentions, motivations, or the identity of the producer/ author). Wolf successfully manages to identify those kinds of textual cues that largely guide the reception process. However, his focus is exclusively on the function of “peritext” (“framing borders”) (i.e., the title of a book, DVD-cover, or opening sequence of a TV- show). This one-sided emphasis holds true for most discussions of paratext; Genette himself dedicated only a small final section of his study to “epitexts,” i.e. paratexts that are not part of the target text’s materiality but are situated in the reception context (for example, reviews and interviews).9 Gray, on the contrary, focuses his attention mainly on epitexts, or, more particularly, on hype, synergy, and peripherals.10 He explains this focus by the all-pervading presence of such textual proliferations in the form of reviews,

8 Since we have defined “text” as a process that includes paratextual elements, “target text” refers to the entity that paratextual proliferations accompany, i.e. the actual film or novel. 9 Cf. among others, de Mourgues 1994; Paech 1994; and Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory 2005, 419. 10 Hype = “advertising that goes ‘over’ and ‘beyond’ an accepted norm”; synergy = “strategy of multimedia platforming”; peripherals = “synergistic merchandise, products, and games” (Gray 2010, 5). 98 Julia Nitz posters, ads, games (to the novel or film), gadgets, and fan discussions. Gray convincing- ly points out how many millions are being spent by media producers on paratexts alone (2010, 7–8). But not only the amount of paratext makes it so powerful within our culture, but also significant is the fact that it isn’t temporally or spatially restricted as is the actual film or TV show. In effect, paratext is much more extended and pervasive in everyday life than the show itself (15). Harry Potter, the novel (and film), is temporally and spatially restricted, but fan articles, spinoffs, Internet postings, and Harry Potter games are not, adding to the original target text an entirely new world of meaning creation. To conclude this foray into the theory of paratext: First, paratext can be considered an integral part of the textual process of meaning creation. Second, paratexts guide the reception process by providing cues that initiate specific cognitive frames of meaning by which we approach and interpret the target text. Third, in order to study the process of textual meaning-making, we must examine peritext and epitext, especially given that the latter’s importance in our media world of hype and synergy is ever increasing.

A Functional Typography of Historio(bio)graphical Paratext

When looking at historiographic texts, we find that the theory of paratext can be applied on two levels. On the one hand, we can understand the historical event itself as “text” and all textual representations that invoke past events as (“original”) paratext. As Gray puts it, “[…] each invocation of a moment in history can paratextually rewrite the text of the event, since, at the moment of the telling, the ‘text’ is only accessible through the ‘paratext’” (2010, 45). He implies that any historiographic text is not fiction in the sense of “imaginary” or “made up” but in the sense of only being an idea/a paratext of those events. Such an understanding of paratexts as ever-changing and renewable versions of past events indeed affirms the nineteenth-century and postmodern belief that there is no way to present the past as it actually was. On the other hand, we can call historiographic paratext of a second-level those paratexts that accompany attempts to (re)present the past. It is through these second-level paratexts that any historiographic discourse is realized, since they offer the texts to the public as “history.” They are the “airlocks,” the “thresholds” (Genette 1997, 408) and the “entryways” through which we have to pass. They define their target texts as fact based, meant to present the past as it “really” was. In the following, I would like to concentrate on second-level paratexts that accompany historio(bio)graphical texts, that is biographical works on historical person- ages. However, as we shall see, such second-level paratexts can also take on the function of “original” paratexts, providing their own textual version of the historical phenomenon with which their target texts deal. I am concentrating on biography in order to limit the scope of my study to a manageable specific area within historiography. Furthermore, this choice was also determined by the fact that the last twenty years has witnessed a renewed interest in the history of the individual, and, especially, of famous persons. Historiogra- phy seems increasingly to be moving away from the popular social histories of the 1970s In Fact No Fiction 99 and 1980s and toward more personal, more dramatic and more reader-friendly histories of remarkable individuals.11 I have worked deductively in composing the functional typology of historio(bio)- graphical paratext, using as reference material the paratexts accompanying historio(bio)- graphical works on George III that were produced by British media between 1990 and 2006 (i.e., film, print, radio, exhibitions, and television). This work was part of a broader study on the presentation of that king in contemporary Great Britain.12 I essentially took up Werner Wolf’s typology of basic functional descriptions of cues for interpretation and established a typology specific to the paratexts of historio(bio)graphical works. I located those cues of interpretation that appeared most frequently; and since I was focusing on historiographic texts, I concentrated on cues that determine the interpretation of the target text and its relation to the past and on keyings that commented on the target text’s treatment and the picture it invokes of George III. In the end, I defined six categories of the most prevalent interpretation aids: 1) world-reference: cues that define the text as fiction or fact, 2) intention: cues that ascribe certain intentions to the producer, 3) intimacy: cues that point to the intimacy created between the audience and the historical subject, 4) genre: generic cues, 5) scientific or popular sphere: hints that reveal whether the text is scientific or more popular entertainment, and, finally, 6) authority: cues that define which kind of authority is ascribed to the text concerning its treatment of historical facts. 1) The functional category of world-reference subsumes cues/hints that mark a textual discourse as referring to a historical (actual) world or a purely literary/imaginary (textual- actual) world.13 In order to establish the world-reference, explicit cues as to content and genre play a role as do implicit structural cues, such as novel-like chapter headings or a particular visual design which point to specific, traditional fictional or historiographic genres. For historiographic texts it seems most relevant which kind of status is ascribed to them as concerns their relation to the past. When looking at the other categories for aids of interpretation, we find that they all, in one way or another, contribute to establish whether we are dealing with fact or fiction. Ultimately, I determined three primary categories of world-reference attributed to the texts that also pay tribute to media conventions: I) information/documentation, II) infotainment, and III) imagination/fiction. These are common distinctions within the media world as well as in media research, but for the purpose of this study and as derived from the analysis, they are defined as such: I) information/documentation are texts defined by their documentary value, which is clearly emphasized over aspects of

11 For the increasing popularity of biographical history, cf. Cannadine 2004; Mandler 2002; and Doležel 2007; 2010. 12 For a more detailed description of the project and its outcome, see Lippert/Nitz 2010a. The following kinds of target texts formed the basis for research: six biographies, six monographs on George III’s family, one novel, and one drama, eight encyclopedias, three exhibition catalogues, 44 newspaper and magazine articles, 32 Kings-and-Queens-publications, two feature films, two radio broadcasts, six TV-shows and two exhibitions (cf. Lippert/Nitz 2010a, 12–13). 13 It is essential to state here again that this category, basically systematizing signals as to the fictional or factual nature of a text, was derived from the paratextual corpus itself. This is to say that most paratexts include cues of this nature. 100 Julia Nitz entertainment; II) infotainment are texts that are fundamentally characterized/framed as factual but at the same time are framed as entertaining by way of narrative devices usually reserved for fiction; III) imagination/fiction are such texts that are, explicitly or implicitly, clearly marked as referring to a textual-actual world. Overall, the framing of the texts as belonging to one of those categories of world-reference is explicit in designa- tions such as novel, drama, biopic, or feature film. Other important, although implicit, cues are hints as to a text’s intention (for example, to portray George III as correctly as possible or to entertain), or the anchoring of the text within the scientific sphere, or the sphere of entertainment via visual design, for example. To illustrate how paratextual cues provide frames of world-reference, let us look at the cover-design of the 1995 Faber and Faber edition of The Madness of George III. The design is quite minimalistic, and the cover is mostly black. The name of the author and the title of the play are printed in plain white letters above a picture of a person strapped to a chair. The background of the picture is blue as is the strap around the person’s body. The cushion the person is seated on and the entire body clothed in trousers and shirt are an artificial white, that is, the color seems simply erased by computer manipulation. At first glance, the most striking feature is the stark contrast in colors with the sky blue framing of the seated figure, the hospital white of the person’s clothing, and the overall black background, which altogether appear artificial and at the same time artful. They invoke the frame of (modern) /art/. The frame of /art/ or /artificiality/ is further accentuated by the word “play” below the Faber and Faber emblem at the top of the cover. Audience members familiar with Alan Bennett as a famous English dramatist could also infer that this will be a piece of fiction in the form of a play by the simple fact that Bennett’s name appears on the cover. All of these cues would situate the work within the realm of entertainment. However, there are also keyings in the cover-design that point towards “real-world”- reference. George III, a well-known historical figure, is mentioned in the title – a fact that was changed in the filmic version, entitled The Madness of King George. Some people (reviewers) argued that this change resulted from the film producers’ fear that Americans would wonder whether they missed parts one and two. Whatever the reason, the title of the drama clearly invokes the real historical personage – the eighteenth-century British king, George III – whereas the film’s title remains more oblique. With the mention of George III, the historical past is invoked as is the genre of historical drama, traditionally known to include real incidents and people from the past. Reference to the “real” past is further emphasized by picture-montage. Attached to the computer-designed figure is the head of George III from the original coronation portrait of the king by Allan Ramsay (1761–1762), probably the most well-known depiction of George III, which is exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery and frequently shown when George III is discussed. This portrait takes on the function of archive photographs since it is the most authentic presentation of the king available. By choosing to include the designation “George III” in the title and by incorporating the portrait head, the designers invoke the frame of the “real” /George III/ and that of /history/. In effect, the artful design and the inclusion of “original” material both situate the work within the realm of infotainment. The audience thus expects to be confronted with fiction that nonetheless provides a glimpse or authentic insight into the historical past. In Fact No Fiction 101

2) The functional category of intention is usually realized via explicit statements as to what a text is meant to achieve: inform about the historical epoch, emphasize certain aspects of George III’s personality, rehabilitate the king from claims of madness, or present events from his perspective, for example. 3) Many of the paratexts claim that the producers of the texts seek to create an intimate portrait via several clues, the most explicit being to call the work a “personal biography” or an “intimate portrait.” Other paratexts assert a rather objective, distanced stance of their “target texts” by invoking frames of a report or survey, which is why the category of intimacy was included. The creation of “intimacy” activates the reader, viewer, or listener to identify with the presented figure or to assume a specific emotional or interest point of view. “Intimacy” usually implies that we are going to gain insight into George III’s thoughts and feelings. This sense may either be taken as an indication of the text leaning towards fiction, since we cannot possibly know what a person from the past thought or felt, or as evidence that the text is revealing heretofore private or unreleased information. The way we read framings of intimacy is thus determined by other cues of genre, for example. 4) One of the main functions of paratexts is to situate a text within traditional genres and thereby to attribute to it specific kinds of discourse. Such genre cues occur in three different forms: a) explicit mention of the genre (biography, history, novel, soap), b) mention of particular discourse types (narrate, discuss, debate, report, portray), and c) characterizations such as tragic, comical, romantic, and satirical. 5) Some metadiscursive framings of the texts situate them either within the scientific/ scholarly or the popular cultural sphere. The entire corpus of texts on George III that was used to compose the functional typology of paratexts belongs to what is generally known as popular history, that is to say, history that we find in various forms of widely distributed media. The individual texts are nonetheless usually characterized as either applying scientific methods as denoted by attributions such as “well researched work” or “scientific survey,” or applying means of entertaining (“entertaining and delightful”). In this respect other cues are, for example, sections in bookstores (children’s literature or history), source citations, information on authors, or a specific design (black and white photographs or cartoon style cover). 6) Finally, there are cues as to the authority of the historiographic texts. These cues denote the degree of reliability and value that can be attributed to the treatment and presentation of historical facts and to this particular version of events and characters. In short, whether “a text” comes as close to the truth as possible. Such a framing is not necessarily linked to a particular genre, so that also imaginary texts might be framed as highly accurate and insightful in their portrayal of the past. Typical cues are information on the author and his production process (for example, “Oxford professor,” “sound methods”), indices, and the institution responsible for the “publication” of the text (for example, The Sun vs. The Guardian, or BBC vs. Warner Brothers). As with any typology, the functional categories of world-reference, intention, intimacy, scientific or popular sphere, genre, and authority are of a model character. In practice these different areas of meaning creation are of course closely linked and work together in guiding the reception of the target text and the historical phenomenon as such. Mainly these categories highlight kinds of interpretation cues that occur most frequently and thus 102 Julia Nitz seem to be the landmarks by which to negotiate, judge and approach historio(bio)graphic texts. In addition, they help us organize research on paratexts in manageable units.

A Case Study of Paratextual Analysis: The Madness of George III

All of the interpretational cues described and categorized in the typology prepare the audience for a text or influence the interpretation of the target text during or after reception. In order to describe the impact and ways of meaning creation of paratexts, Gray differentiates between “entryway paratexts,” which “try to control the viewer’s entrance to the text,” and “in medias res paratexts,” which “flow between the gaps of textual exhibition, or that come to us ‘during’ or after viewing, working to police certain reading strategies in medias res,” this is to say, “those that inflect or redirect the text following initial interaction” (2010, 23, 35). In practice, it is difficult to say at what point an audience (member) encounters a paratext. However, in most cases it can be assumed that audiences decide to see a film, watch a play, or visit an exhibition only because of the paratexts they come across. Considering the mass of media products one encounters, there is hardly any other way to make these decisions, if we consider the proliferation of program guides, posters, reviews, and commercials that impact our consumption choices. Nonetheless, paratexts such as fan discussions or games are more likely to be “con- sumed” after their target texts. For the purpose of this study, I am concentrating on “entryway paratexts” and am assuming that the reception of these paratexts preceded that of the target text. Since the functional categories of historio(bio)graphical paratexts might seem rather abstract, I will demonstrate how the functional typology of paratext can be applied to study the way a particular paratext influences and navigates its target text’s reception and interpretation. For this purpose, let us return to the Amazon review quoted at the beginning: George III’s behavior was often odd, but now he is deranged, rumoured to have even addressed a tree as the King of Prussia. Doctors are brought in, the government wavers and the Prince Regent takes over. This play explores the court of the mad king. […]. (Amazon 2010) The reviewer clearly introduces the drama as a play, and, thus, as a work of fiction. At the same time, it is called an exploration, so we may expect a fictional representation that is, nonetheless, a critical inquiry into the affairs of the court of George III. The only cues as to the possible intentions of the text’s producer are, again, the word “explores” as well as the list of actions that hint at a re-enactment of events. In addition, these present-tense descriptions promise a kind of voyeuristic perspective for the audience, allowing viewers to watch the proceedings at court firsthand. As to generic cues, the list of events creates suspense and implies a teleological development, thereby evoking the realm of entertainment; at the same time, we are made aware by the expression “explores” that it is a form of infotainment that critically examines a historical phenomenon. As to historical accuracy, the review contains no comment that the play deviates from historical facts. Further- more, the use of the present tense implies a certain state of affairs that is indisputable, In Fact No Fiction 103 i.e., this is the way that events were and are. Overall, the cues we receive lead us to assume that we are dealing with a play that provides an authentic insight into the life and court of George III. As to the king himself, he is clearly defined as odd and mad. It is difficult to class the different cues as belonging to only one category; on the contrary, they feed into different areas of meaning creation. The keying “play” denotes the genre as well as the realm of entertainment and world-reference. It is also obvious how cues work with and “against” one another, such as “play” and “exploration.” Only when considering them in combination can we draw conclusions as to their influence on our perception of the play that we haven’t yet watched or read. Paratext is of course not limited to written documents but includes much visual and audio-visual material. To give one prominent example, let us look at some of the images that accompanied reviews of the Madness of George III. Interestingly, only a limited variety of these images were shown in various forms of media. As a result, they exerted an unusually strong impact on the perception of the play within the cultural landscape. See below for two representative examples that depict the suffering of the king in close- up detail.

These photographs serve as an excellent illustration for how to identify paratextual cues and the frames of meaning connected to them. Their most striking feature is that we are put face-to-face with a suffering human being. George III, or as it is, Nigel Hawthorne, is positioned in the center of the images and is facing slightly to the side in utter agony. The /agony/ (frame) is communicated via his facial expression (cue). Intimacy is created via close proximity to his physical and emotional suffering. According to filmic studies, we are encouraged by such close-ups on an individual’s face to take on that person’s emotional point of view; we feel with and for him (cf. Chatman 1999, 444–46; 1989, 151–53). The proximity created between viewer and historical subject also implies, just as the present tense used in the Amazon-review, that we are promised a voyeuristic journey into George III’s most private affairs, feelings, and thoughts. The contrast between the modern photographs and the period attire of the individuals depicted in them hint at a re-enactment and, thus, at a kind of staged play – even if the image isn’t accompanied by any explanatory text. From the suffering figure at the center, In Fact No Fiction 105 we also receive an impression about the kind of play being reviewed or promoted; obviously, we are dealing with a tragedy of sorts. In addition to the agony expressed in the body language of the king, several other elements contribute to the invocation of the genre frame /tragedy/. The stark contrast of colors, the white dress of the king and the black background with a person looming in the dark as in the first picture, hint at something threatening. Since the king is dressed in white, it seems to be he who is threatened. Furthermore, the person in the back wears a uniform in contrast to the king, who is not wearing his usual regal attire. Thus, King George’s suffering as a human being (private body) is center stage, and he seems an object of pity and not of kingly admiration. In fact, his role as king is not at all in the foreground. Another strong indicator of tragic machinations is provided by the forlorn picture of the king strapped to the chair, looking haunted. Clothing and props provide additional general clues as to the nature of the play. The dress (uniform, white shirts) and the props (wooden chair, blanket) can be identified as belonging to the historical past. Interestingly, the quality of a history show is often evaluated by its “authentic” recreation of the past, a phenomenon called “period look”– even though, in most cases, reviewers and audience have no particular knowledge of what the period looked like. Period look is indicative of an attempt to recall the past as genuinely as possible, and, hence, functions as an authenticity device. In the case of The Madness of George III, the period look on the one hand frames it as a history play, and on the other hand provides it with a degree of authority. The paratextual images situate the play in an intermediate zone of imagination and history within the realm of infotainment. It seems to be a tragedy with a tendency towards the docu-drama. Most of the cues and frames invoked by the photographic images are quite obvious and function automatically, building on our knowledge and experience as regular consumers of media texts. In order to understand how the entirety of paratexts, available shortly before and during the staging of the play in London in 1991, influenced the way people approached their viewing of the drama, I shall provide a brief summary of the findings of my analysis based on the six categories of the functional typology of historio(bio)graphical texts. Considering the entirety of available contextual paratexts accompanying Bennett’s play, we find that they frame the target texts in quite a homogeneous manner: the play is de- clared a fiction that documents historical facts very accurately, and is thus informative as well as entertaining; the genre is identified as historical drama, and as an argumentative tragedy with a tendency to the tragicomical. Bennett presumably intends to inquire into and revise history, to draw an intimate portrait of the king (his role as a monarch as well as a private human being) and to provide a survey of political intrigues. Concerning the documentary quality and accuracy of historical facts and circumstances, most paratexts assume quite a high reliability and authority for the play, and thus, more or less, posit it within popular history writing rather than literature. The repeated statement that Bennett is a “historical revisionist” (cf. City Limits, “The Madness of George III,” 5 Dec. 1991) who tries to rehabilitate the “much maligned king” (cf. Daily Express, “By George! What a Funny Old World,” 29 Nov. 1991), and to “redress [his] reputation” (cf. Independent, “Malady in a Minor Key,” 30 Nov. 1991), and the assertion that he does so successfully, greatly influenced the perception of George III by the British public and his subsequent 106 Julia Nitz portrayal and treatment by the British media. The paratextual discourse describes George III as an eccentric but a good-hearted man who failed as husband and father, turned mad and ended tragically, invoking sympathy and understanding. Overall, the paratexts do not contradict one another to any considerable extent, although there are a few isolated voices who are altogether more critical of the play and rather dismissive of George III. The paratexts to The Madness of George III therefore prepare the audience in advance for the actual target text and for the kind of image of the king that is being established. In turning to the play itself, I will discuss the extent to which paratext and target text form a continuous entity. There is no rule that requires paratextual cues to actually be “true” to the target text. However, most scholars researching paratexts, including Genette [1987] (2002), Goffman (1986), and Wolf and Bernhart (2006), assume that, as Roy Sommer explains, target text and paratext “framing activities present a semantic continuum” (2006, 389). If we did not assume that paratexts are reliable entryways, no “truth-pact” or “fiction-pact” could be “contracted” between author/text and audience. Our failure to enter into a contract of fiction-making would prevent us from calmly looking on when a person is shot or otherwise treated violently on stage. As David Bordwell, borrowing from cognitive psychology, explains for the film genre: “initial information establishes a frame of reference to which subsequent information [is] subordinated as far as possible.” For film this means that once a character is identified as a villain, for example, it takes some strong evidence to change our perception of him/her. Bordwell calls this mental prepossession “primacy-effect” (1985, 38). For the relation between paratext and target text this implies that although there is no binding connection between them in fact, in practice we treat them as continuum. Thus, we approach a target text with preset assump- tions that are hard for us to overturn. Of course, if a target text seems to be in stark contrast to its entryway paratexts, we are forced to change or correct our presumptions. Keeping this in mind, I investigated the extent to which paratext and target text for The Madness of George III formed a continuum, and which effect paratext’s and text’s interrelation had on the perception of the play and the monarch as such within British collective memory. The play is a tragicomedy that draws a very intimate picture of George III as a fallible human being, loving father and husband, and less than brilliant monarch. It depicts a period in the king’s life around 1800, when he is struck by a disease that seems to rob him of his sanity. As a consequence, the Prince Regent, his first born son, together with the opposing political party in Parliament, tries to take over the reign and government. They are prevented in doing so, however, by the king’s recovery after barbarous treatment by doctors and a “psychologist,” who together reduce him to a mere patient. Concerning genre, intimacy, and the portrayal of the king, paratext and target text seem indeed to form a continuum. In other respects, however, they don’t. According to the paratextual discourse, the play basically declares George III mad, which can be explained by his suffering from a metabolic disease. The actual play, however, is much more subtle and ambiguous in these matters than the paratexts would have us believe. It provides an array of possible explanations. Dundas, “a refined Scot,” for example, believes that the monarch’s trouble lies in suppressed sexuality: “Half the trouble, to my mind; is that the cork’s too tight in the bottle. What is wanting with HM is a little quiet dissipation. A King and no mistress. Or anyone in a lofty situation. It’s unheard of” In Fact No Fiction 107

(Bennett [1992] 1995, 20). The behavior of the king at times also suggests that he is de- liberately playing the lunatic to escape his wearisome duties as king, a position in which he is ever putting on pretense. Shortly after his recovery, when told that he seems to be more himself, King George says, “I have always been myself, even when I was ill. Only now I seem myself. That’s the important thing. I have remembered how to seem” (70). The way the drama treats George III’s “madness” is indicative of the way it deals with history in general. It doesn’t provide explicit answers but rather different perspectives, possibilities, and insights into human nature in general. As such, the framing of the play as historical documentary is valid. However, paratexts not only assign a high authority to the documentary quality of the play as such, but they fix that quality to certain readymade interpretations. Let me illustrate this argument by the most striking example. After immersing oneself in the paratexts on The Madness of George III, one believes it an established fact that he suffered from a metabolic disease called porphyria. The metabolic-disease hypothesis was introduced in the 1960s by Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine in “The Insanity of George III: A Classical Case of Por- phyria,” but this study’s theory has so far not been affirmed by scientific evidence. In his preface to the 1995 Faber and Faber edition of Madness, Bennett acknowledges that it simply didn’t work dramatically to have an insane monarch. He explains why he took up the porphyria-theory: From a dramatist’s point of view it is obviously useful if the King’s malady was a toxic condition, traceable to a metabolic disturbance rather than due to schizophre- nia or manic depression. Thus afflicted, he becomes the victim of his doctors and a tragic hero. (Bennett [1992] 1995, ix) Because the audience, reviewers and media producers considered the play historically accurate, its explanation of George III’s madness as a metabolic disease became widely accepted. Evidence of this belief is the metabolic disease theory’s continued presence in other subsequent works on George III, as for example in the BBC’s TV-documentary Timewatch: How Mad Was King George? (2004). The play is repeatedly referred to as highly reliable in its portrayal of historical facts and in its presentation of George III’s character. The reviewer Clive Hirschhorn in his article “Nigel’s Act of Madness Is a Winner,” for example, claims that Bennett portrays the “King’s deteriorating mental and physical condition with surgical precision” (The Sunday Express, 1 Dec. 1991), and Maureen Paton points out that Bennett “captures all the human pathos and scabrous humour of the much maligned king” (Daily Express, “By George! What a Funny Old World,” 29 Nov. 1991). Such reviews resulted in the fact that Hawthorne’s enactment of George III has become the prime example of how most people today think of George III. Of course this view has been helped by the highly successful film version, but more important were the discussions of the play and the film that manifested the king’s image. Here seems to be the exact case that Gray predicts in his discussion of the all-pervading influence of paratext: “[R]ather than simply modify or inflect the text, the paratexts may in time become the text” (2010, 46, Gray’s emphasis). 108 Julia Nitz

Conclusion

The discussion of target and paratext in Alan Bennett’s play The Madness of George III has demonstrated that it was not the play on its own that established a particular interpretation of this eighteenth-century monarch and that manifested porphyria as the explanation for his mental condition. Foremost, it was the paratexts accompanying the play that fostered such interpretations. Marking the play as a highly reliable historical inquiry into the life and times of George III, paratexts activated audiences to take the play’s interpretative games at face value. Even more, by selecting certain elements from the play and establishing them as fact, those individuals who never went to see the play or didn’t read the drama were nevertheless instilled with this interpretation of the historical personage. In the discussion of the nature of historiographic texts, aligning myself with Ricœur and others, I concluded, that there is a difference between fact and fiction, which is manifest in historians’ intention to present the past as accurately as possible, or rather in people’s belief that they do. Taking this view a step further, I argued that such an intention or “truth-pact” is communicated via the paratexts of individual works. A discussion of theories of paratext then highlighted that 1) they can be considered an integral part of the textual process of meaning making, and 2) they guide the reception process by invoking particular cognitive frames of meaning. The discussion also clarified that the ever-increasing importance of hype and synergy in our media-saturated world by necessity shifts the focus from peritext to epitext. This is to say, that not only should we “judge a book by its cover” (peritext) but also by its contextual proliferations, such as ads, reviews, and interviews (epitext). As a first step in developing research methods for the analysis of historiographic paratext, I offered a functional typology of historio(bio)graphical paratext, establishing six functional categories: world-reference, intention, intimacy, genre, scientific or popular sphere, and authority. Those categories were deducted from a large corpus of paratexts on works (re)presenting George III. They proved to be the landmarks by which biographical history is approached and judged. It matters to our way of dealing with a historiographic text whether it is announced to be fiction or fact, tragedy or comedy, historically accurate or not. Looking at historiographic texts and their textual proliferations through the lens of these functional criteria helps us to understand how the texts work and how they create meaning. As cultural analysts, we need to pay attention not only to “works” such as films, novels, TV-shows and plays, but also to their textual proliferations, their paratexts, in order to investigate their cultural impact, value, and meaning. Transferring this insight onto research regarding the presentation of historical phenomena within an interpretative community, I conclude that it is not enough to study historiographic works, but that we must also study reviews, ads, and various other related texts in our research in order to understand the works’ cultural impact and their function in establishing a particular version of the past within a society’s collective memory. A number of issues, such as authorship, reliability, and mass market dynamics, still need to be addressed, especially with paratexts offered on the Internet. For example, we have no idea as to the author of the quoted Amazon review. It is doubtful whether that In Fact No Fiction 109 person even saw the play. S/he describes George III addressing a tree as King of Prussia, which is a well-known urban legend but which does not feature in the play.

Works Cited

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Author’s Address:

Dr. Julia Nitz (née Lippert) Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik MLU Halle-Wittenberg 06099 Halle/Saale, Germany E-Mail: [email protected] http://www.anglistik.uni- halle.de/fachgebiete/kulturwissenschaft/professur/personen/julia_nitz/?lang=en

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