An epigraph is a short quotation — a line
of poetry, a sentence from another book, a fragment of song, a
phrase from scripture — placed at the very start of a work, or
at the start of a chapter, to frame what follows. The
quotation is set apart from the main text, usually before any
narrative begins. It is one of the smallest and most
sophisticated devices in literature: a writer's claim about
the reading context, made before the story is allowed to
start.
What an epigraph does
Epigraphs do several jobs:
Frame the reading. The epigraph
announces what kind of book this will be, what tradition
it belongs to, what the reader should bring.
Make a thesis statement obliquely. The
writer's argument is condensed into a quotation by
someone else — making the claim feel less assertive
while still making it.
Acknowledge an influence. The writer is
placing themselves in a tradition, citing a master,
asking to be read in a particular lineage.
Establish tone. An epigraph from
Marcus Aurelius signals a different book than an
epigraph from a Beyoncé lyric.
Create
subtext. The
quotation works on the reader before the first sentence,
planting an interpretive grid the reader will use
throughout.
Famous epigraphs
Some that have done structural work in famous books:
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
opens with a Latin and Greek epigraph from Petronius's
Satyricon: the Sibyl of Cumae, asked what she
wants, replies "I want to die." The epigraph frames the
whole poem as Sibyllic — a voice that wants to end but
cannot.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
doesn't carry an epigraph itself, but T. S. Eliot's
The Hollow Men opens with one drawn from
Conrad — "Mistah Kurtz — he dead." A epigraph borrowed
from one canonical work to frame the next.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great
Gatsby opens with a poem attributed to
"Thomas Parke d'Invilliers" — actually Fitzgerald
himself writing under a pseudonym. The epigraph is a
private joke: "Then wear the gold hat, if that will move
her…"
Toni Morrison's Beloved opens
with the dedication "Sixty Million / and more" — the
epigraph as memorial. The number names those lost to
the Middle Passage and slavery.
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
opens with three epigraphs, including a newspaper
clipping about a 300,000-year-old scalped skull. The
multiplicity is the argument: scalping is older than the
novel's American story.
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's
Tale opens with three epigraphs — from
Genesis (the Rachel-and-Bilhah story Gilead literalizes),
from Swift's A Modest Proposal, and from a Sufi
proverb. Together they signal that the novel is both
satire and serious dystopia.
Chapter epigraphs
Some books use epigraphs at every chapter, not just at the
start. George Eliot's Middlemarch does this — a verse
or prose quotation at the start of each chapter, often from
Eliot's own poetry. Frank Herbert's Dune uses chapter
epigraphs from in-world fictional documents to build the
science-fictional setting. Each chapter epigraph in this mode
prepares the reader for the chapter's specific concerns.
Self-quotation
Some writers epigraph themselves — quoting their own
earlier work, or inventing a pseudonymous attribution.
Borges loved this game. Nabokov did it ironically.
Fitzgerald's epigraph in Gatsby is the most famous
case. The move is a small declaration of authorial
self-sufficiency: I will frame this book with my own
voice.
The risk: epigraph as showing off
Epigraphs can become a way of pre-emptively claiming a
prestige the book doesn't earn. A novel that opens with three
epigraphs from Kierkegaard, Mandelstam, and Cioran is making
promises the prose then has to keep. Skilled writers use
epigraphs sparingly and earn them; pretentious writers
sprinkle them.
How to read it in context
When a book opens with an epigraph, read it twice — once
before the book, once after. The first reading establishes the
frame; the second confirms or revises what the epigraph
actually meant. Some epigraphs are puzzles you can only solve
in retrospect; the writer has placed a key at the door and
made you find the lock yourself.
Try Lexio
Look up any word like this — in any book, in any browser.
Lexio is a free Chrome extension and web app that reads a word's actual context and tells you what it means in this sentence, not from a generic dictionary.