Read the Few Epigraphs That Come Before the Chapter Do They Have a Common Thread

0.
PERSONS attempting to notice a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY Order OF THE AUTHOR, Per 1000.G., Chief of Ordnance.
(The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Marking Twain)

1.
The all-time prologue I always read was an epigraph. The volume in question was from my early reading days, before I had come to empathise that epigraphs were a common thing. The quote was a prelude to a ripping fantasy yarn by Raymond Feist and was from the pen of Shakespeare:

We were, fair queen,
Two lads that idea at that place was no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as to-solar day,
And to be boy eternal.

The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare

I would never hold that book up to whatsoever disquisitional scrutiny today, only Feist's talent for setting off an epic coming-of-age story with quotes about how great it was to exist young—and to imagine anything was possible—had a kind of perfect intonation.

Having taken up the drape "writer," epigraphs take taken on a significance of some other sort. Simply what purpose epigraphs serve, where they come from, and how the source from which they were fatigued affects the story in which they are embedded take all bubbled to the surface. Among the most pressing questions for me: should epigraphs be thought of equally part of the text, a sort of pre-modern, post-modern device, like tossing a paper clipping into the body narrative? Or are they actually a straight invitation past the author, maybe saying, "Look here, for from this inspiration came this tale?"

Put some other way, are they part of the book or part of the author, or both, or neither?

People beloved to call epigraphs a bundle of things, an "apposite quote that sets the mood for a story and to give an idea of what'due south coming" or "a quote to set the tone like a prelude in music" or as a "foreshadowing mechanism" or "like little appetizers of the great entrée of a story" meant to illuminate "of import aspects of the story [and] get us headed in the right direction."

Braggadocio, say I. Humbug.

two.
Epigraphs have a long history. As early every bit 1726, one tin can notice in Swift's Gulliver's Travels the cousin of the epigraph, a fictitious "note from the publisher" explaining that Gulliver is in fact a real person and these his true papers. Yeah, Lolita got that from somewhere. But even Gulliver'due south fictionalized annotation, that cousin to the epigraph, can exist traced to Cervantes and Don Quixote (published in 1605) wherein the author assures us that:

My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of books.

Author'due south Preface to Don Quixote (following, one should note, several sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies)

And then it is certain that fifty-fifty in the time predating the texts which we now call the canon, and some would affirm Don Quixote the showtime "novel," the epigraph and its ilk were widely entrenched into the formula for literature.

The point is, of grade, that epigraphs have been around for a long time.

3.
So to the question of how we are to read epigraphs, one must first decide whether there are 'bad' epigraphs and 'good' epigraphs, and if so, how these categories might arise.

I have already described something which many would characterize as an case of a good kind of epigraph, that quote which seems to connect in a fundamental mode with the text. Similar, perhaps, "Vengeance is mine, I shall repay." Yet, of course, epigraphs cannot be too explicit, as well articulate or likewise thematic or it ruins the whole endeavor. If the writer gets up on a soapbox and declares "this is an important novel" well then the ship's sailed. That'southward why William Styron starts Sophie's Selection with this quote from André Malraux: "…I seek that essential region of the soul where absolute evil confronts brotherhood."

Clearly these are not the but types of epigraphs that succeed. Nabokov hit a domicile run with his epigraph for The Gift with this quote from a Russian school-book: "An oak is a tree. A rose is a flower. A deer is an animate being. A sparrow is a bird. Russia is our fatherland. Decease is inevitable." Which reveals that sometimes it is enough to be clever. Ander Monson's Neck Deep and other Predicaments has an epigraph from the Chicago Manual of Style: "A dedication intended to be humorous volition very probable lose its humor with fourth dimension and and then is inappropriate for a serious volume destined to take a permanent place in the literature." Again, very clever. So clever epigraphs work.

Nonetheless, two kinds of epigraphs do not work. The beginning is any serious literary epigraph to a Harry Potter book, like for instance, this one from The Deathly Hallows

Expiry is merely crossing the earth, as friends practice the seas; they live in one another withal. For they must needs be present, that dear and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is complimentary, as well every bit pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and lodge are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.
William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude

Perhaps ane will telephone call me hypocritical for allowing a quote from Shakespeare to grace a munchy fantasy novel and then to plough around and say that the epigraph to a Harry Potter book falls flat. I would simply note that the fantasy novel in question actually took itself seriously whereas Harry Potter tried to have it both ways—and the William Penn quote is about life and death, which would take been inappropriate to any volume that wasn't. Rowling should have selected something on the theme of love and friendship to be true to the piece of work she published.

Some other sort of epigraphical failure is in Blood Meridian. McCarthy uses ane of those triple-epigraphs which I'll accost in a moment, and the 3rd epigraph, afterward two highfalutin contemplations on darkness and expiry he adds this:

Clark, who led last twelvemonth's trek to the Distant region of northern Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, besides said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-onetime fossil skull plant in the aforementioned region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped.

THE YUMA DAILY SUN

McCarthy has an important point hither, which is that people have been scalping each other since forever. Unfortunately, it would have come out more candidly through the mouth of 1 of his characters. The large problem is that in a semi-biblical masterwork, the merely function of the entire overarching text that ever makes whatsoever reference to normal-sounding speech is this tiny bit of a 3-part epigraph.

So this sets out an objective standard. Epigraphs must count as part of the text because they touch the style the text is read, and therefore are tied more than to the text than to the author. They belong to the text, regardless of the way the author feels. Besides, every bit these epigraphs brand articulate, they are clearly non sources of inspiration for the story. Quite often they are tacked on.

4.
So epigraphs bide past sure principles, and they do not e'er work. Quite often they come across similar throat clearing, sort of a "hither it goes" before the writer gets into the work. Especially when an author has more than 1 epigraph, which seems to accept become only more than mutual. So when searching for an epigraph, the most important part of the endeavor should be how the quote integrates with the novel equally a whole. Does information technology fit the tone, and does information technology take on a deeper meaning, or lend a deeper meaning, because information technology's there?

(As a quick aside, I would like to say that overt references to Dover Beach should be restricted to epigraphs. In a striking number of novels, the verse form is really a plot betoken giving rise to a meaning epiphany. I'm looking at you Fahrenheit 451 and most especially Sabbatum.)

But the question remains: How does i make up one's mind precisely the tone an epigraph should take? Herman Melville in Moby-Dick has probably ane of the longest and virtually interesting (and nearly tonally consistent) epigraphs ever. He spends several pages just talking about Whales. But over again, isn't it just—too much? Would it not accept been a meliorate epigraph if he had simply included simply this one from among all his myriad quotations:

October 13.  "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head.
"Where away?" demanded the helm.
"Three points off the lee bow, sir."
"Enhance up your wheel.  Steady!"  "Steady, sir."
"Mast-caput ahoy!  Do you see that whale now?"
"Ay ay, sir!  A shoal of Sperm Whales!  There she blows!  There she breaches!"
"Sing out! sing out every time!"
"Ay Ay, sir!  There she blows! at that place–there–THAR she blows–bowes–bo-o-os!"
"How far off?"
"2 miles and a half."
"Thunder and lightning! then about!  Call all hands."
–J. ROSS BROWNE'S ETCHINGS OF A WHALING CRUIZE.  1846.

A similar question of "too much" arises in Sophie's Pick and other texts in which the writer seeks to use an epigraph in another language. Given the fact that near readers will not be speakers and therefore cannot see the intricacies in tone and the shades of significant in that other language's words, i wonders whether the author is writing the epigraph to himself or to the reader. If we are to think of epigraphs as part of the chief text, and so this foreign-language snippet needs to stand on its ain, information technology tin't just be authorial vanity, correct? Although, since his editor let him institute information technology there in the original German or French, ane wonders if this means that epigraphs are thought to be more similar dedications in the publishing globe than the primary text.

5.
Finally, one wonders why epigraphs are e'er at the outset of the book. Some stories finish and make you want to hold the book to your chest and absorb it directly into your very soul. How moving it would be to me to stop a book and turn the page, pitiful that information technology'southward all over and read an epigraph that reflects on all that's come before.

Andrew Tutt recently graduated from Knuckles University. He lives in Armenia, working for the international anti-corruption organization Transparency International as office of a one-year postgraduate fellowship. He has written several short stories and is currently at work on a novel.

romerofeling.blogspot.com

Source: https://themillions.com/2010/03/on-epigraphs.html

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