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About fifteen years ago, early in my career and still thinking about directions in which I would like for it to go, I received a package in the mail from the book review editor of Sixteenth Century Journal. In it was a hardbound book just published by Harvard University Press. There was also a note. The editor was a friend, so I was only a little startled by the message. "Here's a book that only someone like you will find interesting. I hope you'll review it for us."
Hmmm. Only someone like me. She made clear that my combination of interests in cultural, intellectual, and rhetorical topics was maybe a little bit different from those of most "normal" historians writing about sixteenth century Europe. To begin, I didn't write about sixteenth century Europe. Moreover, I really like thinking about the "microrhetoric" of historiography and cultures of memory all over the world.
And she might be right about the book's perceived interest to even "normal" academic readers. Think about book titles that get you excited, whether or not you read many academic works. I am just looking at one shelf of my books right now, and the titles sing to me: Words & Life, Mindsight, Truth and Method, Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths?, Writing Culture, and The Dialogic Imagination. Now those are titles. What was this one?
The Footnote*
Yes, The Footnote. I had an idea about what my friend (the book review editor) meant, and even a little more understanding of how I was perceived in the academy (that weird guy reading odd stuff). The only hint that there might be something more was the subtitle: *A curious history.
I was intrigued. I dashed through the preface and acknowledgments, and couldn't wait to get started. Within just a few pages, by the end of the segment I have included here, I was hooked. This was a splendid little book, and a heck of a lot more serious than it appeared. It is also funny. Don't take the footnoted text below too seriously. It is part of the elaborate joke as well as part of a serious argument. If you think Grafton is showing off, you would be correct. If you think that he is just showing off...you've missed what is both funny and thrilling about the book.
Here is the beginning of Anthony Grafton's The Footnote* (*A Curious History).
The Footnote* (*A Curious History)
Anthony Grafton (1997)
Chapter One
Footnotes: The Origin of a Species
In the eighteenth century, the historical footnote was a high form of literary art. No enlightenment historian achieved a work of more epic scale or more classic style than Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And nothing in that work did more than its footnotes to amuse his friends or enrage his enemies.1 Their religious and sexual irreverence became justly famous. "In his Meditations," says Gibbon the historian of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, husband of the notoriously "gallant" Faustina, "he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife, so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners."2 "The world," urbanely reflects Gibbon the annotator, "has laughed at the credulity of Marcus; but Madam Dacier assures us (and we may credit a lady) that the husband will always be deceived, if the the wife condescends to dissemble." "The duty of an historian," remarks Gibbon in his ostensibly earnest inquiry into the miracles of the primitive church, "does not call upon him to interpose his private judgement in this nice and important controversy." It may seem somewhat remarkable," comments Gibbon in a footnote which drops all pretense of decorum, "that Bernard of Clairvaux, who records so many miracles of his friend St. Malachi, never takes any notice of his own, which, in their turn, however, are carefully related by his companions and disciples." "The learned Origen" and a few others, so Gibbon explains in his analysis of the ability of the early Christians to remain chaste, "judged it the most prudent to disarm the tempter." Only the footnote makes clear that the theologian had avoided temptation by the drastic means of castrating himself—and reveals how Gibbon viewed this operation: "As it was his general practice to allegorize scripture; it seems unfortunate that, in this instance only, he should have adopted the literal sense." Such cheerfully sarcastic comments stuck like burrs in orthodox memories and reappeared to haunt their author in the innumerable pamphlets written by his critics.
1. See in general G.W. Bowersock, "The Art of the Footnote," American Scholar, 53 (1983-84), 54-62. For the wider context, see the remarkable older study by M. Bernays, "Zur Lehre von den Citaten und Noten," Schriften zur Kritik und Litteraturgeschichte, IV (Berlin, 1899), 255-347 at 302-322.
2. E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 4; ed. D.B. Womersley (London, 1994), I, 108-109.
3. Chap. 4, n. 4; ibid, 109.
4. Ibid., chap. 15, 15; I, 473.
5. Chap 15, n. 81, ibid., 474.
6. Ibid., 480.
7. Chap. 15, n. 96, ibid. For a recent critical discussion of the story of Origen's self-castration, see P. Brown, The Body and Society (New York, 1988), 168 and n. 44.
8. This point is well made by Bernays. For more recent studies along the same lines, see F. Palmeri, "The Satiric Footnotes of Swift and Gibbon," The Eighteenth Century, 31 (1990), 245-262, and P.W. Cosgrove, "Undermining the Footnote: Edward Gibbon, Alexander Pope, and the Anti-Authenticating Footnote," Annotation and Its Texts, ed. S. Barney (Oxford, 1991), 130-151.
Gibbon's artistry served scholarly as well as polemical ends—just as his footnotes not only subverted, but supported, the magnificent arch of his history. He could invest a bibliographical citation with the grave symmetry of a Ciceronian peroration: "In the account of the Gnostics of the second and third centuries, Mosheim is ingenious and candid; Le Clerc dull, but exact; Beasobre almost always an apologist; and it is much to be feared, that the the primitive fathers are very frequently calumniators." He could supply a comic parallel with a gravity usually reserved for the commendation or condemnation of a major historical figure: "For the enumeration of the Syrian and Arabian deities, it may be observed, that Milton has comprised, in one hundred and thirty very beautiful lines, the two large and learned syntagmas, which Selden had composed on that abstruse subject." And he could salute the earlier scholars, good Christians all, whose works he drew upon for a thousand curious details, with a unique combination of amused dismissal of their beliefs and genuine respect for their learning. Gibbon was certainly right to think that a comprehensive account of his sources, written in the same style, would have been "susceptible of entertainment as well as information." Though his footnotes were not yet Romantic, they had all the romance high style can provide. Their "instructive abundance" attracted the praise of the brilliant nineteenth-century classical scholar Jacob Bernays as well as that of his brother, the Germanist Michael Bernays, whose pioneering essay on the history of the footnote still affords more information and insight than most of its competitors.
9. For two helpful case studies see J.D. Garrison, "Gibbon and the 'Treacherous Language of Panegyrics,'" Eighteenth Century Studies, 11 (1977-78), 40-62; Garrison, "Lively and Laborious: Characterization in Gibbon's Metahistory," Modern Philology, 76 (1978-79), 163-178.
10. Chap. 15, n. 32; I, 458.
11. Chap 15, n. 9, ibid., 449.
12. See e.g. n. 98 to chap. 70, in which Gibbon expertly reviews and assesses the work of the indefatigable historian and editor of texts Ludovico Antonio Muratori, "my guide and master in the history of Italy." "In all his works," Gibbon comments, "Muratori approves himself a diligent and laborious writer, who aspires above the prejudices of a Catholic priest" (Muratori himself would have claimed that writing accurate history lay within a good priest's duties); ed. Womersley, III, 1061. On Muratori himself see S. Bertelli, Erudizione e storia in Ludovico Antonio Muratori (Naples, 1960).
13. "Advertisement," I, 5 (this text first appears under the same title, on the verso of the half title to the endnotes in the first edition of the first volume of the Decline and Fall [London, 1776]).
14. The phrase "lehrreiche Fülle" is Jacob Bernays', as quoted with approval by Michael Bernays (305, n. 34). The relationship between the two deserves a study. Jacob mourned his brother as dead when he converted to Christianity: but Michael nonetheless emulated Jacob's analysis of the manuscript tradition of Lucretius, in his own genealogical treatment of the editions of Goethe. For Jacob, see A. Momigliano, "Jacob Bernays," Quinto contributo all storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1975), 127-158; for his work on Lucretius, see S. Timanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann, 2nd ed. (Padua, 1985). For Michael Bernays, see W. Rehm, Späte Studien (Bern and Munich, 1964), 359-458, and H. Wiegel, Nur was du nie gesehn wird ewig dauern (Freiburg, 1989. So far as I know, the third brother, Freud's father-in-law Berman, did not venture an opinion on Gibbon's footnotes.
15. See e.g. E. Faber and I. Geiss, Arbeitsbuch zum Geschichtsstudium, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg and Wiesbaden, 1992). For a detailed and judicious American guide to these issues, see F.A. Burkle-Young and S.R. Maley, The Art of the Footnote (Lanham, Md., and London, 1996).
Nowadays, historians arguments must still stride forward or totter backward on their footnotes. But the lead of official prose has replaced the gold of Gibbon's classic oratory. In the modern world—as manual for writers of dissertations explain—historians perform two complementary tasks. They must examine all the sources relevant to the solution of a problem and construct a new narrative or argument from them. The footnote proves that both tasks have been carried out. It identifies both the primary evidence that guarantees the story's novelty in substance and the secondary works that do not undermine its novelty in form and thesis. By doing so, moreover, it identifies the work of history in question as the creation of a professional. Like the high whine of a dentists drill, the low rumble of the footnote on the historian's page reassures: the tedium it inflicts, like the pain inflicted by the drill, is not random but directed, part of the cost that the benefits of modern science and technology exact.[1]
Notes[1] Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1-5.
Bibliography
Grafton, Anthony. The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
 |
| [a] Inscribed RF |
Hmmm. Only someone like me. She made clear that my combination of interests in cultural, intellectual, and rhetorical topics was maybe a little bit different from those of most "normal" historians writing about sixteenth century Europe. To begin, I didn't write about sixteenth century Europe. Moreover, I really like thinking about the "microrhetoric" of historiography and cultures of memory all over the world.
And she might be right about the book's perceived interest to even "normal" academic readers. Think about book titles that get you excited, whether or not you read many academic works. I am just looking at one shelf of my books right now, and the titles sing to me: Words & Life, Mindsight, Truth and Method, Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths?, Writing Culture, and The Dialogic Imagination. Now those are titles. What was this one?
The Footnote*
 |
| [b] Noted RF |
I was intrigued. I dashed through the preface and acknowledgments, and couldn't wait to get started. Within just a few pages, by the end of the segment I have included here, I was hooked. This was a splendid little book, and a heck of a lot more serious than it appeared. It is also funny. Don't take the footnoted text below too seriously. It is part of the elaborate joke as well as part of a serious argument. If you think Grafton is showing off, you would be correct. If you think that he is just showing off...you've missed what is both funny and thrilling about the book.
Here is the beginning of Anthony Grafton's The Footnote* (*A Curious History).
The Footnote* (*A Curious History)
Anthony Grafton (1997)
Chapter One
Footnotes: The Origin of a Species
 |
| [c] Dully noted ADV |
1. See in general G.W. Bowersock, "The Art of the Footnote," American Scholar, 53 (1983-84), 54-62. For the wider context, see the remarkable older study by M. Bernays, "Zur Lehre von den Citaten und Noten," Schriften zur Kritik und Litteraturgeschichte, IV (Berlin, 1899), 255-347 at 302-322.
2. E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 4; ed. D.B. Womersley (London, 1994), I, 108-109.
3. Chap. 4, n. 4; ibid, 109.
4. Ibid., chap. 15, 15; I, 473.
5. Chap 15, n. 81, ibid., 474.
6. Ibid., 480.
7. Chap. 15, n. 96, ibid. For a recent critical discussion of the story of Origen's self-castration, see P. Brown, The Body and Society (New York, 1988), 168 and n. 44.
8. This point is well made by Bernays. For more recent studies along the same lines, see F. Palmeri, "The Satiric Footnotes of Swift and Gibbon," The Eighteenth Century, 31 (1990), 245-262, and P.W. Cosgrove, "Undermining the Footnote: Edward Gibbon, Alexander Pope, and the Anti-Authenticating Footnote," Annotation and Its Texts, ed. S. Barney (Oxford, 1991), 130-151.
Gibbon's artistry served scholarly as well as polemical ends—just as his footnotes not only subverted, but supported, the magnificent arch of his history. He could invest a bibliographical citation with the grave symmetry of a Ciceronian peroration: "In the account of the Gnostics of the second and third centuries, Mosheim is ingenious and candid; Le Clerc dull, but exact; Beasobre almost always an apologist; and it is much to be feared, that the the primitive fathers are very frequently calumniators." He could supply a comic parallel with a gravity usually reserved for the commendation or condemnation of a major historical figure: "For the enumeration of the Syrian and Arabian deities, it may be observed, that Milton has comprised, in one hundred and thirty very beautiful lines, the two large and learned syntagmas, which Selden had composed on that abstruse subject." And he could salute the earlier scholars, good Christians all, whose works he drew upon for a thousand curious details, with a unique combination of amused dismissal of their beliefs and genuine respect for their learning. Gibbon was certainly right to think that a comprehensive account of his sources, written in the same style, would have been "susceptible of entertainment as well as information." Though his footnotes were not yet Romantic, they had all the romance high style can provide. Their "instructive abundance" attracted the praise of the brilliant nineteenth-century classical scholar Jacob Bernays as well as that of his brother, the Germanist Michael Bernays, whose pioneering essay on the history of the footnote still affords more information and insight than most of its competitors.
9. For two helpful case studies see J.D. Garrison, "Gibbon and the 'Treacherous Language of Panegyrics,'" Eighteenth Century Studies, 11 (1977-78), 40-62; Garrison, "Lively and Laborious: Characterization in Gibbon's Metahistory," Modern Philology, 76 (1978-79), 163-178.
10. Chap. 15, n. 32; I, 458.
11. Chap 15, n. 9, ibid., 449.
12. See e.g. n. 98 to chap. 70, in which Gibbon expertly reviews and assesses the work of the indefatigable historian and editor of texts Ludovico Antonio Muratori, "my guide and master in the history of Italy." "In all his works," Gibbon comments, "Muratori approves himself a diligent and laborious writer, who aspires above the prejudices of a Catholic priest" (Muratori himself would have claimed that writing accurate history lay within a good priest's duties); ed. Womersley, III, 1061. On Muratori himself see S. Bertelli, Erudizione e storia in Ludovico Antonio Muratori (Naples, 1960).
13. "Advertisement," I, 5 (this text first appears under the same title, on the verso of the half title to the endnotes in the first edition of the first volume of the Decline and Fall [London, 1776]).
14. The phrase "lehrreiche Fülle" is Jacob Bernays', as quoted with approval by Michael Bernays (305, n. 34). The relationship between the two deserves a study. Jacob mourned his brother as dead when he converted to Christianity: but Michael nonetheless emulated Jacob's analysis of the manuscript tradition of Lucretius, in his own genealogical treatment of the editions of Goethe. For Jacob, see A. Momigliano, "Jacob Bernays," Quinto contributo all storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1975), 127-158; for his work on Lucretius, see S. Timanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann, 2nd ed. (Padua, 1985). For Michael Bernays, see W. Rehm, Späte Studien (Bern and Munich, 1964), 359-458, and H. Wiegel, Nur was du nie gesehn wird ewig dauern (Freiburg, 1989. So far as I know, the third brother, Freud's father-in-law Berman, did not venture an opinion on Gibbon's footnotes.
15. See e.g. E. Faber and I. Geiss, Arbeitsbuch zum Geschichtsstudium, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg and Wiesbaden, 1992). For a detailed and judicious American guide to these issues, see F.A. Burkle-Young and S.R. Maley, The Art of the Footnote (Lanham, Md., and London, 1996).
Nowadays, historians arguments must still stride forward or totter backward on their footnotes. But the lead of official prose has replaced the gold of Gibbon's classic oratory. In the modern world—as manual for writers of dissertations explain—historians perform two complementary tasks. They must examine all the sources relevant to the solution of a problem and construct a new narrative or argument from them. The footnote proves that both tasks have been carried out. It identifies both the primary evidence that guarantees the story's novelty in substance and the secondary works that do not undermine its novelty in form and thesis. By doing so, moreover, it identifies the work of history in question as the creation of a professional. Like the high whine of a dentists drill, the low rumble of the footnote on the historian's page reassures: the tedium it inflicts, like the pain inflicted by the drill, is not random but directed, part of the cost that the benefits of modern science and technology exact.[1]
Notes[1] Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1-5.
Bibliography
Grafton, Anthony. The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
 |
| [d] Clarity in the clouds RF |
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