The Footnote : A Curious History - Softcover

Grafton, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571196012 ISBN 13: 9780571196012

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1998

Synopsis

Devoted entirely to the history of the footnote, this quirky but academic study emphasizes the importance of the footnote in offering empirical support for the stories we live by. Its own story is neither so simple nor so reliable as it might seem, the footnote being the creation of a varied and talented group which includes almost as many philosophers as historians. It numbers among its celebrated practitioners Swift, Pope, Gibbon, Rank, Hume and Hegel.

About this title

Review:

The struggle over what history is and how it should be told affects even such a constant convention as the footnote. As Anthony Grafton tells us in his entertaining study The Footnote, this tool of scholarship is just that: a tool that marks the professional from the amateur. "Like the high whine of the dentist's drill," he says, "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." There are some scholars, Grafton avers, who consider the footnote an anachronism meant to distance people from their pasts. Conversely, there are some who wage whole wars against other scholars through the medium of their notes. In any event, Grafton opines, the footnote will prevail, protecting works of scholarship from assault as surely as armor protects a tank.

About the Author:

Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0571196012
• ISBN 13: 9780571196012
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252