Behind The Great Gatsby: Towards a Semiotics of Titling

The paper sets out to prompt insight into titling as a paratext. Titling is commonplace in the academia but its creative process with reference to the production/reception of the work is under-researched1, a deficiency likely to hinder the development of titology. A case in point, the novel “The Great Gatsby” has undergone several titling options before the editor and the author settled on one. Controversy has ever since animated debates amid scholarship in literature and film studies. Actually, each title magnifies one aspect of the plot, at the centre of which stands the protagonist Gatsby.