J. M. 쿳시의 소설과 파라텍스트 -『예수의 유년시절』의 제목이 갖는 함의에 관하여

The title of J. M. Coetzee’s recent novel The Childhood of Jesus forces readers to anticipate a story of the Christ-child only to frustrate them. This is a fine example of what Gerard Genette calls the “Jupien effect”: the paratext which is supposed to aid the text usurps the place of the text and refuses to be secondary. Using Genette’s theory of paratexts, this study tries to come terms with Coetzee’s title which does not fulfill its descriptive function nor delivers what it first promises: a story of Jesus. In other words, this study is an attempt to explain the “Jupien effect” of Coetzee’s paratext: how it “tends to go beyond its function and to turn itself into an impediment, from then on playing its own game to the detriment of the text’s game.” Ultimately, this study is to suggest that by making use of the twisted paratext Coetzee is engaged in a sort of postmodern game: collapsing the hierarchical principle existing between the paratext and the text, the principle which has been “held almost unconditionally for centuries.”