From: Patsloane-AT-aol.com Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 14:30:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: PLC: Footnotes > Could one find, for > instance, that the the attempts to make of literary criticism a science > would be > accompanied by the elaboration of footnotes? It strikes me not. Or could > one > find a 'footnote-correlation' between the historical divergence of 'analytic' > > and 'continental' philosophy since Frege. And if footnotes are disappearing, > > what does it mean? Is writing without footnotes perhaps a possible ' > rhetorical' > strategy to present one's text as more original than the 'secondary > literature' > that is, well, secondary? Reg, Select any 20 page article in College Art Bulletin (art history), and 100-150 footnotes, some quite long, is the norm. In PMLA (lit crit), 20 to 25 footnotes is more average, and far less documentation. A really extreme difference for, I think, a variety of reasons. Just happened to be discussing use of footnotes in a paper of mine that's being read for a journal. The journal isn't fond of footnotes. I said a line in a TSE poem might be an allusion to Felix Klein, a mathematician. Some readers will provisionally accept this, and want to see where I'm going to take it. But person presently reading paper challenged this, asking for evidence that a poet would know anything about math or mathematicians. In this case, TSE read Principia Mathematica (Russell and Whitehead), borrowed math books from his friend Norbert Wiener, etc. But I want to put this material in a footnote, on the grounds that a person who isn't raising poet/math questions doesn't want to read through an explanation of what Principia Mathematica is and what Russell (who was Eliot's teacher) has written on math theory. Here, the footnote is assuming that some readers, but not all, will want the point to be documented. I think, to really understand the extremely intricate purpose(s) of footnotes, you have to read through many examples and ask the purpose(s) of individual notes. Footnotes are a stylized way of responding to many issues, and really fascinating for that reason. pat sloane --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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