This introduction is a paratext. It is not the first paratext you have encountered in your approach to this book. You will have noticed its title, and registered its scholarly cover, either on the bookshelf or in a digital reproduction by an internet seller like Amazon or Abebooks. You may have found this volume through a series of epitexts: a review, a publisher’s flyer, or a search of a library catalogue or online database. Perhaps you followed a footnote in someone else’s work or a reference in a bibliography, or one of the contributors was shameless in promoting his or her chapter to you over coffee at a conference. A passage or pithy sentence may have been quoted in another text, persuading you this volume might be worth consulting. Some readers may never even reach this point, merely checking the copyright information on the flyleaf to create a catalogue entry or fill out a meretricious bibliographical note.