Epigraph (literature)

In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document, monograph or section or chapter thereof.^[1] The epigraph may serve as a preface to the work; as a summary; as a counter-example; or as a link from the work to a wider literary canon,^[2] with the purpose of either inviting comparison or enlisting a conventional context.^[3]

Not to be confused with epigraph as an inscription studied in the archeological sub-discipline of epigraphy, epigraph (mathematics), epitaph, epigram, or epithet.

A book may have an overall epigraph that is part of the front matter, or one for each chapter.

As the epigraph to , Tom Clancy quotes Winston Churchill in the context of thermonuclear war: "Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together – what do you get? The sum of their fears."^[4]

The Sum of All Fears

frequently used epigraphs in his historical novels, including throughout his Waverley novels.

Sir Walter Scott

The long quotation from 's Inferno that prefaces T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is part of a speech by one of the damned in Dante's Hell.

Dante

The epigraph to 's Ragtime quotes Scott Joplin's instructions to those who play his music, "Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast."

E. L. Doctorow

The epigraph to 's The Brothers Karamazov is John 12:24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The epigraph to Eliot's Gerontion is a quotation from 's Measure for Measure.

Shakespeare

Eliot's "" uses the line "Mistah Kurtz, he dead" from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as one of its two epigraphs.

The Hollow Men

As an epigraph to , Ernest Hemingway quotes Gertrude Stein, "You are all a lost generation."

The Sun Also Rises

The epigraph to 's Altneuland is "If you will it, it is no dream..." which became a slogan of the Zionist movement.

Theodore Herzl

's line "Nobody can rule guiltlessly" appears before chapter one in Arthur Koestler's 1940 anti-totalitarian novel Darkness at Noon.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

A quotation serves as an epigraph in Hunter S. Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson

uses many epigraphs in his writing, usually to mark the beginning of another section in a novel. An unusual example is The Stand wherein he uses lyrics from certain songs to express the metaphor used in a particular part.

Stephen King

a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement

Epigram

the first few words of a text, employed as an identifying label

Incipit

applied to games and toys

Flavor text

an opening to a story that establishes context and may give background

Prologue

the first non-specific talk on a conference spoken by an invited (and usually famous) speaker in order to sum up the main theme of the conference.

Keynote

Ahern, Rosemary, ed. (2012). . New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781451693270.

The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin

(1984). The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction. New York: Perigree Books. pp. xvii–xviii. ISBN 9780399512094.

Barth, John

Stokes, Claudia (Summer 2018). . American Literary History. 30 (2): 201–221. doi:10.1093/alh/ajy005.