The Preface as Exegesis

Abstract

A preface provides a way into understanding a book: by stating its subject and scope, by commenting on techniques employed or themes addressed, or by focussing on a central or contentious issue. Prefacing involves an explicatory introduction to a reading of a work.

Students are generally mystified by, or fearful of, the exegesis. In her TEXT article "Writing in the Dark: Exorcising the Exegesis," Gaylene Perry (a PhD student at the time) wrote:

.the creative work coupled with an exegesis has no model that I can think of in published works, other than antiquated texts, and certainly not of the kind where the author herself has written the exegesis. (Perry 1998)

There are, in fact, a myriad number of these "exegeses." They are called Prefaces, Introductions, Forewords, Afterwords, etc, etc. And they don't only appear attached to the works they focus on and introduce: exegetical activity occurs also dislocated from the original work. Some of these exegetical writings; are more comprehensively explanatory of the work they comment on than others. But the practice of a writer attaching to a fiction text a commentary cotext in a non-fiction form is well established.