Chapter 2 - Embedding and Embodying the Nation

Summary

This chapter describes some paratextual practices in the Tour, as they are defined by Gérard Genette in Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. These start with the title-page and prefatory sections, and end with appendices and indexes. Other features under review are sections embedded in the text, such as manuscripts cited, proposals reprinted from external sources, lists taken from standard reference works, enumerative tables, and so on. What the various devices examined here do create a flexible medium, into which Defoe can insert a range of textual and paratextual messages – recycling his own work, transferring the substance and appearance of material from other writers, and enacting the shape of the nation in the constituent parts – so that volumes, letters, prefaces and appendices collectively body forth a virtual representation of Great Britain.