File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9712, message 51


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


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