{"id":1161,"date":"2011-02-28T23:30:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:24:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:24:25","slug":"footnotes-sneakily-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2011\/02\/28\/footnotes-sneakily-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Footnotes: “Sneakily Important”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Definition<\/a>
Source: Macquarie Dictionary - Australia's National Dictionary Online.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Footnotes are “sneakily important” remarked my daughter Angel when I told her that I was writing a post on footnotes.\u00a0 “You would think a footnote is not important because it is not in the main part of the book” she said.\u00a0 If footnotes have such an insignificant place in books why bother about them?<\/p>\n

The importance of footnotes first leapt to my attention years ago when I was reading Patrick Delaforce’s Nelson\u2019s First Love: Fanny\u2019s Story, <\/em>a biography of Lord Nelson’s wife, Frances.\u00a0 I wanted to believe what I was reading.\u00a0 The bibliography told me that the author had done his research. Yet I found it hard to believe all that I read because of the lack of footnotes.\u00a0 I found myself asking for verification of some of the assertions in the book – but nowhere did he back up these assertions by telling the reader where they could find the original source of information.\u00a0 A footnote stating where the source backing an author’s claim can be found shows commitment by the author.\u00a0 It shows that they are confident in their research and open to others checking their work.<\/p>\n

This is not just an academic issue.\u00a0 When I read Delaforce’s book I had not studied history at university, but as a general reader I felt let down by the author.\u00a0 I am not the only one that felt that way.\u00a0 David Ellison wrote in The Naval Review:<\/em><\/p>\n

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…this is not a biography or a history. It is one of the unfortunately fashionable pieces of ‘faction’, a mixture of fact and fiction.
\nDavid Ellison, Jan. 1989<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eugene L. Rasor came to the same conclusion (p. 174).
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

If a book is fiction, tell me so and I will enter your imaginary world.\u00a0 If a book seeks to be an analysis of what actually occurred in the past, footnote it or I won’t believe you.\u00a0 I don’t mind whether it is a footnote at the bottom of the page or an endnote at the back of the book – just please, please, please demonstrate why I should trust you.<\/p>\n

There is another reason why footnotes are important.\u00a0 A good history will be adding to the work of others.\u00a0 The author will have read numerous books relating to the topic and will be writing with the goal of adding something new to the existing body of work.\u00a0 It is a matter of honesty and respect to acknowledge the work of others in footnotes and the bibliography.\u00a0 Arthur S. Brisbane wrote an article in the New York Times<\/a> <\/em>last year that demonstrates the problems that arise when authors do not properly acknowledge the sources of ideas and information that they use.<\/p>\n

This issue crops up again and again.\u00a0 I have just finished reading The Ornament of the World:\u00a0 How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain<\/em> by Maria Rosa Menocal.\u00a0 This book is clearly written for the general public.\u00a0 It has a guide for reading groups at the back of the book and does not have discussion about methodology and theory that would limit the appeal of some academic books to the general reader.<\/p>\n

But there are no footnotes.\u00a0 I did not feel quite as uncomfortable as I did when I read Delaforce’s book and asked myself why.<\/p>\n

Firstly I noted that Menocal is the director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University<\/a>.\u00a0 I figured that her job depends on the reliability of the research backing each of her books.\u00a0 I then saw that while conventional footnotes were absent, the ‘Other Readings’ section at the end of the book had a subsection titled ‘Primary Sources and their Interpreters’ (pp. 284-288) which acts in a similar way to footnotes.\u00a0 While the little numbers are absent in the body of the text, the reader can go to the back of the book and find acknowledgement of the translations on which the author relies.\u00a0 While there are far fewer acknowledgements of sources than in a conventionally footnoted history, at least there is something there.\u00a0 I also appreciated the author’s suggestions of Arabic literature, reference books and other histories that the reader may wish to read (pp. 288-292).\u00a0 For these reasons I trusted the author, but I still felt that the lack of referencing was disappointing and diminished the value of the book.<\/p>\n

Is it fair that I am more forgiving of an academic who does not footnote than an author without academic qualifications who follows the same practice?\u00a0 A difference between Menocal’s book and that of Delaforce’s is that both have been reviewed by people who are familiar with these historical topics.\u00a0 Errors were found in Delaforce’s work (Ellison, p. 94) whereas no significant errors were found in Menocal’s book.\u00a0 But surely all authors who write histories, no matter what their background, should be expected to meet the same standards in the presentation of their work.<\/p>\n

Menocal would have written reams of intricately footnoted articles and books during her academic life.\u00a0 Why did she eschew footnotes for this particular book?\u00a0 Presumably she addresses this in her lecture, Writing without footnotes:\u00a0 the role of the medievalist in contemporary intellectual life<\/a>, <\/em>published by Global Academic Publishing in 2001. <\/em>Unfortunately I have not been able to find this lecture in Australian libraries or online.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

My guess is that Menocal was probably told by her publisher that the general reader does not like footnotes.\u00a0 Another historian, Madge Dresser gives her account of dealing with the requests of a publisher to curtail the footnotes (Dresser, p. 50).\u00a0 What evidence is there to support this view that the general public do not like thorough referencing in histories?<\/p>\n

Is the aversion to footnotes on the part of publishers a symptom of western society’s desire to simplify, to strip issues of annoying detail and complexity?\u00a0 Angel pointed out that footnotes look unimportant because they are small.\u00a0 Do we subconsciously devalue footnotes because visually they are insignificant or they add clutter to the page?<\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n