Thomas Sider

My research concerns how paratext allows writers to experiment with narrative and voice and the extent to which paratexts constitute digression. In particular, I study moments in early modern English literature that displace the speaker and the reader, showing how elements such as marginalia or annotations, while initially seeming supplementary, begin to contaminate and take a prioritized stake in the text. I am also interested in how this innovation resembles formal experimentation in modernist and postmodern literature.