Paratextuality in Anglophone and Hispanophone Poems in the Us Press, 1855-1901

Drawing examples from over 200 English-language and Spanish-language newspapers and periodicals published between January 1855 and October 1901, Paratextuality in Anglophone and Hispanophone Poems in the US Press, 1855-1901 argues that nineteenth-century newspaper poems are inherently paratextual. The paratextual situation of many newspaper poems (their links to surrounding textual items and discourses), their editorialisation through circulation (the way poems were altered from newspaper to newspaper) and their association and disassociation with certain celebrity bylines, editors and newspaper titles enabled contemporaneous poetic value and taste that, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, were not only sentimental, Romantic and/or genteel. In addition to these important categories for determining a good and bad poem, poetic taste and value were determined, Bonifacio argues, via arbitrary consequences of circulation, paratextualisation, typesetter error and editorial convenience.

Ayendy Bonifacio (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. He writes and teaches about American literature and culture, Latinx studies, and print culture from the nineteenth-century to the present. His writing is published in American Periodicals, Prose Studies, American Literary Realism, The New York Times, Slate, ASAP/Journal, J19, The Black Scholar and other scholarly and public-facing venues.