The doctoral thesis explores the verbal and non-verbal elements within contemporary Croatian multimodal novels, moving along two literary-theoretical and stylistic methodology bases – Gérard Genette’s paratext theory (Genette 1997a), and the recent tools of multimodal stylistic and narratology that were formed by analysing the novel genre (Hallet 2009, 2014, 2018; Gibbons 2008, 2012a; Pignagnoli 2014; Nørgaard 2019). When taking into consideration the proliferation of peritextual elements in the postmodern and post-postmodern literature, the tendency to develop and integrate the non-verbal and visual discourse within the novel, while accepting the confirmed thesis about the novel as a hybrid genre (Bahtin 2019; Ryznar 2017; Peleš 1999; Nemec 1988), the study is exploring the elements, which were primarily identified and described as peritexts, and afterwards went past their borderline positional and functional properties, and became co-constituents of the narrative ( Sadokierski 2010; Zubarik 2005, 2014; Pignagnoli 2014, 2023). Additionally, the tools of multimodal stylistics help to read the novel aspects, which were only secondarily explored in the literacy science until now. It is the visual text level, which, in the semiosis of different semiotic resources, produces the final result on the novel pages. By combining the structural principles of the genettean relation of text – paratext, that is peritext, and the functioning of semiotic resources – primarily the layout and the typography with a dominant wording within the multimodal stylistic, the possibilities of the stylistic and narrative effects of the individual narrative elements are being explored. Furthermore, by determining the terminological deficiencies of the peritext concept because of its implications of secondaryness, marginality, and peripherality, the doctoral thesis suggests and operationalises the peritextoid term as a particular element in novels, which is, from the stylistic and narrative point of view, as relevant and important as all other macrostructural novel elements. The theorization goals for concrete literary-theoretical insights about the paratext, that is peritext concept have been set, as well as for the tools of the multimodal stylistic novel analysis (which comprise the theoretical-methodological part of the doctor thesis), and subsequently for the systematization and determination of differences between peritexts and peritextoids, as well as for the investigation of the stylistic and narrative effects of those elements, and semiotic resources in the corpus of the contemporary Croatian multimodal novel (which comprise the analytical-interpretative part of the doctor thesis). The corpus of the doctoral thesis was chosen considering the diversity and versatility of peritexts, peritextoids, namely the variety of how the potentials of semiotic resources are used in individual novels, which are perceived as multimodal novels regarding the insight overviews of multimodal stylistics and narratology. According to that, in the analytical-interpretative chapters for the case study investigation of the aforementioned elements and the semiosis of resources, four contemporary Croatian novels, published after 1990, have been chosen: Ballad of Josip (1997) by Milorad Stojević, Atanor (2017) by Jasna Horvat, Gods of Neon (2019) by Nenad Stipanić, and Urania (2022) by Luka Bekavac. After the introduction, in which the starting stylistic-theoretical concepts, goals and hypotheses of the doctoral thesis are described, the second chapter provides an overview of the development of stylistics and stylistic disciplines in the Croatian literary science context, emphasizing the narrative prose and novel genre, and it moves towards an overview of recent insights from the multimodal stylistics and narratology field. Determined is the way from micro-stylistic approaches (Pranjić 1983; Josić 2021) towards discussions about the efficiency of functional stylistics in stylistic literature approaches (Bagić 2004; Ryznar 2016) up to the operationalization of the concept of discourse and multimodal stylistics (Kovačević and Badurina 2001; Katnić-Bakaršić 2003; Buljubašić E. 2017; Ryznar 2017; Bionda 2022), which are considered starting methodological models in the doctoral thesis. Thereafter, starting from the general deconstruction hypothesis about genre categories (Derrida 1988a), stylistic and narrative particularities of the novel genre are determined, in support of its protean nature, stylistic heterogeneity, and interdiscursivity (Bahtin 2019; Solar M. 1974; Lasić 1977; Nemec 1988; Peleš 1999; Ryznar 2017). Finally, the chapter contextualizes the multimodality term, and the approaches within the multimodal research field, emphasizing the connection between the multimodal perspective and stylistics, as the youngest stylistic subdiscipline (Buljubašić E. 2017). Within that, key findings from the area of multimodal narratology and multimodal novel stylistics from the studies by Wolfgang Hallet (Hallet 2009, 2011, 2014, 2018), Alison Gibbons (Gibbons 2008, 2010, 2012a, 2012b), and Nina Nørgaard (Nørgaard 2019) are being listed; in conclusion, based on the graphic model for the novel analysis by Gajo Peleš, a model for a multimodal novel analysis is created. The third chapter of the theoretical-methodological part reviews Genette’s paratext theory, his main assumptions, the division regarding key characteristics (location, temporal situation, substantial status, pragmatic status, function) of elements, and thereafter it warns about the critics, amendments and revisions of his theory. In the context of researching the elements beyond the peritextual apparatus, hence the recurring types of peritexts which function around a text, the study is particularly considering the questioning of genettean types of peritexts and principles in the context of the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century literature, where in the critics and adaptations of the theoretical components of contemporary literature, those approaches are emphasized, which are closely related to multimodal understandings, and which in general more seriously consider the visual, graphic, and compositional level of a text (Sadokierski rec2010; Pignagnoli 2014; Nørgaard 2019), and which distance themselves from the definition relation central – peripheral and/or basic – additional. Therefore, the chapter resumes with a more detailed discussion about the contributions and insights, which are presented in the studies by Milorad Stojević (Stojević 1999), Sabina Zubarik (Zubarik 2005), and Virginia Pignagnoli (Pignagnoli 2014). Unlike the principles of similarity and representativeness of recurring types of peritexts in the genettean model, the fourth chapter – the main part of the doctoral thesis – researches the individual and more authentic, thematic, stylistic, and narratively motivated elements which overcome their additional, supportive, and secondary characteristics, and become equal macro-stylistic novel elements. The fourth chapter firstly operationalizes the suggested peritextoid term, contextualizing it regarding specific literary-theoretical terms with the same suffixoid (example: sonnetoid, strophoid, textoid), and then it compares and determines it in relation to the peritext and semiotic resources, which are discussed in multimodal stylistics. Contrary to the peritext, which exists and functions in an in-between zone, on the verge of a text, peritextoids are integrated into the narrative, they are its component, and they must be realized in one of the diegetic novel levels. Therefore, it is obvious that peritextoids go beyond the primarily borderline and subordinate position by resemantization, and functionally, they are becoming stylistic and narratively relevant marks of the narrative (Jukić and Rem 2017). The most interesting peritext, i.e. peritextoid types in the reference literature are notes and footnotes, which best depict the special-composition similarity, and the functional and semantic differences in the narrative context. Moreover, all visuals and graphic images in a multimodal novel as a (sub)genre are peritextoids, even when they are allographic elements, because they are a part of the microcosmos of the narrator or the character, and they are directly motivated by the wording. The fourth chapter, in addition to the part of the discussion, as well as the operationalization and the contextualization of the peritextoid term through the corpus of the contemporary Croatian novel, includes four case studies which investigate the statuses, functions, and effects of peritexts, peritextoids, and semiotic resources in the four multimodal novels chosen for the doctoral thesis corpus. In the multimodal novel Ballad of Josip by Milorad Stojević, the overreaching, poetic-stylistic strategy is the poetic of a game (Nemec 2003), which relies on a range of metafictitious and metatextual procedures which the novel uses, by discussing itself, to disintegrate the conventionally determined genre particularities, and by doing that also implicate their potential as a semiotic object, that is a book. It can be said that Stojević’s narrative has two layers and two levels – the first level refers to the conventionally and structural understood lineal wording, while the second level are peritextoid elements, especially the footnote apparatus which breaks up the narrative (chrono-logical) order of the story. Besides the particularities of the footnotes, a series of other elements appears in the novel, which function as peritextoids – the reproduction of a Betty Boop illustration, a note about (non)fictionality, a series of photography reproduction, tables, a note about the date and location of an event, and stylized content. Not only do they act as disturbances to the narrative coherence, multiplied peritextoid element, mostly footnotes, instead of confirming the authenticity and ability to document the events, they create opposite effects in a novel; so, in a broader sense, they develop quasi-documentary functions of a parodic type (Kovačević and Funčić 2001). The peritextoid apparatus in the novel is realised by the compositional spreading of the space of these elements (detriment of the narration in the dominant wording), and finally the multimodality of the novel confirms the specific content in which the autodiegetic narrator also appears. The multimodal novel Atanor by Jasna Horvat emphasizes, more intensely than the other novels of the doctoral thesis corpus, the layout semiotic potential, which is closely related to the two-column organisation of the narrative. Namely, in a series of peritextual and peritextoid elements, and the raising of semiotic reference aspects, a particular stylistic effect on the page space is realized by segmenting the narrative into margins (coloured in grey), and the story realized by wording in the middle (white) part of the page. On the left margins, but in dominant wording, an archival citationality type is realized (Oraić Tolić 2019), which supports the narrative communication about the periodic table and chemical elements as the umbrella concept of the novel, while the right ones are reserved for a navigation pane, which makes the reader aware of their position regarding the layout and parts of the novel. Therefore, Atanor establishes awareness about the novel as a semiotic object in different ways. Other than the specific margins, which draw the novel closer to a textbook, popular-scientific, and digital style, and the investigation of semiotic reference potentials, there are peritexts and peritextoids like elements in the form a dedication, epigrapfic elaboration, stylized content as the period system, reproductions of photographs, images, schemas, maps, diagrams, tables, handwritten notes etc., footnotes, popular-scientific expositions with foreword elements, popular-scientific announcements of subchapters with epigraphs, QR codes, and “Elementology”, a kind of a metatextual handbook for the interpretation of chemical elements, and at the same time the thematic-motive layer of the narrative. The two-column and fragmented organization of the narrative, but also the integration of reproductions and QR codes into it, results in the connection of the novel with the screen aesthetics (Olson 2022), which again confirms the novel as a multimodal one. On the other hand, as a distinction to the other novels in the doctoral thesis corpus, due to the narrative reliance on chemistry and other natural sciences knowledges, the peritexts and peritextoids in Atanor have closer didactic effects. While the narrative composition in Atanor is near to the visual extents of computer programs and internet portal spaces, the multimodal novel Gods of Neon by Nenad Stipanić makes a step further and broadens and makes it narrative complex in the spaces outside the book, on multimedia social network pages of its author. That novel, with its hyperlinks to the network and QR codes, comes closer to the consideration of peritexts and peritextoids through centrifugal principles of their functioning (McCracken 2013). Although Stipanić’s multimodal novel is minimally exemplified by the realisation of peritextoids and peritexts, merely through an epigraph, photography reproductions, headings with the aforementioned hyperlinks and QR codes, as well as the “Death list” survey form, it is, considering its genre, utterly unique in the doctoral thesis corpus because it is determined through combinations on the Croatian novelistic scene of an exceptional bizarro fiction and a fictionalized autobiography (Kreho 2019). Apart from the contextualization of the terms, and the interpretation of the genre particularities of bizarro fiction in Stipanić’s novel, the chapter addresses the autobiographism characteristic (Medarić 1993), and is interprets it through the peritexts and peritextoids in the novel. While the epigraph acts on the verge of the genettean peritext understanding, and it is getting closer to the narrator’s narrative, and by that to the peritextoid understanding, the photography reproductions are in a specific relation to the motives of layer and narrative realized in the wording, because they are provided, not only as visual resources, but also as their absence. Hence, in the Gods of Neon, the effect of a visual negation (Nørgaard 2019) was observed, which, in combination with the semiotic resources potential, as well as the present or absent peritexts and peritextoids, finally produces a multimodal disharmony (Gibbons 2012a). The last multimodal novel in the doctoral thesis corpus – Urania by Luka Bekavac – is the most comprehensive and most distinctive example of that (sub)genre in contemporary Croatian literature. It is a novel which is a part of Bekavac’s series of narrative fiction, which share the same diegetic universe (Ryznar 2017), and they are encompassed by genre tendencies of speculative fiction (Oblučar 2014). The peculiarity of Urania in the doctoral thesis corpus is that it is the only example of a multi-volume novel – there are nine units named books published in six volumes, and also, it has more permeable boarders and seams in between the narrative elements and narrative levels, which also includes a blurred perspective when it comes to the isolation of peritextoids in the context of these levels. The variety of typographic styles which form the complete narrative, on one hand, contributes to the precise differentiation between the narrative sections and segments, but on the other hand, it blurs them. Except for the necessary analysis and interpretation of the typography and composition in Urania, regarding the settings of the doctoral thesis, the following peritextoid elements were questioned: the reproduction of the isolated Division page, the 2109 section and its operating system, the calibration, the excerpts from Ognjen’s notebooks and the “VENUS CLOUD / Melpomena IV”, the aports, the fragments in the “Interferences”, “Finnal evaulation”, “Configurations”, as well as the individual contents of the volumes, and the complete content as examples of publisher’s peritexts. From the perspective of multimodal stylistic tools, the narrative was examined through two prevalent, parallel, narrative segments, which are the backbone of the story, in which characters appear on different narrative levels, and condition the narrative organization with the included mentioned peritextoid elements. The first segment is the (quasi)diary entries of the character by Luka Bekavac, and the other is the complex production system of Biotop 54, which is realized on a specific two-page organization (on the left pages, which resemble a computer screen interface, there is a so-called control canal, and on the right ones is a more conventional narrative of a heterodiegetic, extradiegetic narrator). Bekavac’s multimodal novel emphasizes therefore not only a rhizomatic narrative functioning (Zubarik 2005), but also the questioning of the book as a code and semiotic object. The final chapter, that is the conclusion, summarizes the main findings which were presented in the theoretical-methodological part of the doctoral thesis, and a tabulation compares the similarities and differences between the peritexts and peritextoids in the four multimodal novels from contemporary Croatian literature, which were used as study cases, on which the stylistic effects of the aforementioned elements were investigated in conjunction to the semiotic potentials of the individual novel resources. There was a warning, that the peritexts and the newly identified concept of peritextoids are not different regarding their formal and location characteristics, that is regarding the very compositional position of those elements, but it is necessary to examine the connection of the element regarding the dominant wording, its motivation in the context of the story and the narrator, that is to determine if it belongs to the diegenic level of the narrative. It was concluded that the peritextoid is a dynamic interpretation category which needs to be approached as a macrostructural narrative element. Furthermore, it is obvious that particularly that element enhances the fragmentation and outspread of the narrative, and in a broader context, it is a genre-forming element of a multimodal novel. At the end, a recommendation of additional studies of a similar type is given, which could question whether peritextoids are also represented in other literary-historical periods, and what is their so far observed relation to the stylistically poetic novel model of those periods, but also a continuation of a multimodality research in the corpus of contemporary Croatian literature.