In theory

There is little debate over the visual place allotted to epigraphs in written works; they are generally accepted to be quotations placed somewhere between the title and text of a work.  In poems, this means epigraphs usually appear on the same page as the poem, below the title, but above the first line.  In novels, epigraphs are usually placed on their own page, following the title page and dedication page, if there is one.

Gerard Genette, in his revolutionary (at least in terms of epigraphs) book Paratexts, writes that epigraphs appear, “at the edge of the work, generally closest to the text” (Genette 144).  Similarly, in his book He Do the Police In Different Voices, Calvin Bedient sees the epigraph as, “a peripheral writing, a side jotting” (Bedient 6).  Although there is general agreement about the visual place of epigraphs, there is no such agreement on their metaphorical place –or what they are seen as a comment on – within a poem or novel.

Traditional Usage

In his article “The Sibyl and the Voice,” Richard Sullivan argues that, “the traditional use of epigraph delimits the possibilities of the poem, reducing it to an occasion or specified idea” (Sullivan 20).  He highlights one of the original purposes of epigraph – to mark the poem as part of a conversation, or as responding to a particular idea.  Although Sullivan sees this as the most prominent role of epigraphs, Genette gives a more nuanced account, arguing that epigraphs usually have one of four general functions.  According to Genette an epigraph can be a comment on the title of the poem, a comment on the text of the poem, a citation of an author whose name gives backing to the work, or simply a quotation marking the period or tone of a piece (Genette 156-160).

Genette argues that the first two functions of epigraphs are “direct” while the others are more “oblique” (Genette 156).  As Genette sees it, the direct function of epigraphs is to elucidate.  Thus the first two functions of epigraphs he describes are elucidation of either the title or the text.

Genette’s claims about the place of epigraphs are harder to draw out in his discussion of the second two “oblique” functions of epigraphs.  He argues that in the third type of epigraph – one that includes a citation of an author in order to give backing to the work – the most important thing is, “who the author is, plus the sense of indirect backing that its presence at the edge of a text gives rise to” (Genette 159).  It is not totally clear, however, how this place at the edge of at text, adds any lasting sense of importance to the work.

Genette’s final epigraph categorization also suggests that the epigraph is somehow set off, commenting on an entire work.  Genette writes, “the most powerful oblique effect of the epigraph is perhaps due simply to its presence, whatever the epigraph itself may be: this is the epigraph-effect” (Genette 160).  Here again the claim is that the epigraph is an independent piece related to the whole work.  The fact that Genette characterizes the purpose of this kind of epigraph as the “epigraph effect” indicates that its function is directly related to its place as epigraph – as something off to the side of a work.  The epigraph in this case sets up an idea of the background or period of a poem, which it can do for the whole poem because it is slightly outside of it.

Modern Usage

It can be difficult, after reading Genette’s complex assessment of how epigraphs work, to get a practical sense of what they do, but I think he is right to bring forward the diversity of their functions.  In a sense Genette takes Calvin Bedient’s point about the epigraph being a “side jotting” and explains the various purposes that side jotting could have.  It is important, however, to recall Richard Sullivan’s point that an epigraph may actually “delimit” the possibilities of a work.   This claim fits in with the idea that an epigraph marks a work as part of a specific literary conversation, but there is also an important implicit claim that an epigraph in some way defines the work as a whole.

Here we can see the only real misstep that Genette makes – he looks mainly at the traditional role of epigraphs, and sees them as separate from the works they accompany.  However, if one begins to look at modern usage of epigraphs, as Richard Sullivan does in his examination of the poems of T.S. Eliot, it is clear that epigraphs are inextricable from the poems they accompany.  More and more, authors are using epigraphs to make points about the literary past, political statements, and even jokes that resonate throughout their works.

With the rise of the postmodern novel epigraphs often self-consciously mark the text as text and call attention to the choices an author makes in putting together a book.  Kurt Vonnegut’s epigraphs, for example often quote his own characters as though they are real people.  In this way he highlights his own writing as already, in a sense, being part of the literary past.  In addition he sends up the seriousness with which many authors take their literary endeavors, by including epigraphs from completely ridiculous characters.

Finally, with the rise of electronic content and mass eBook distribution, epigraphs now serve to mark texts as literary objects, complete with separate title, dedication, and epigraph pages, even where the literal pages may not exist.   In this way epigraphs are used, even in electronic texts to show the link between past and present authors.

Thus we can take from Genette and Bedient that epigraphs serve numerous purposes for the authors who choose them, and that traditionally they stand outside of a work and comment on it.  But from Sullivan’s examinations of T.S. Eliot’s epigraphs it is also clear that the place of modern epigraphs is moving from being “peripheral” to internal and that more and more they are integral to the texts they accompany.

(find a complete list of authors referenced, on the citations page)