(Roughly) Daily

Gertrude Himmelfarb begs to differ: “The footnote would seem to be the smallest detail in a work of history. Yet it carries a large burden of responsibility, testifying to the validity of the work, the integrity (and the humility) of the historian, and to the dignity of the discipline.”

Matthew Wills channels the estimable Anthony Grafton in defense of the oft-maligned marginalia…

“The history of the footnote may well seem an apocalyptically trivial topic,” writes historian Anthony Grafton. “Footnotes seem to rank among the most colorless and uninteresting features of historical practice.” And yet, Grafton—who has also written The Footnote: A Curious History (1999)—argues that they’re actually pretty important.

“Once the historian writes with footnotes, historical narrative becomes a distinctly modern” practice, Grafton explains. History is no longer a matter of rumor, unsubstantiated opinion, or whim.

“The text persuades, the note proves,” he avers. Footnotes do double duty, for they also “persuade as well as prove” and open up the work to a multitude of voices.

Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), the founder of source-based history, is usually credited with the “invention” of the scholarly footnote in the European tradition. Grafton describes von Ranke’s theory as sharper than his practice: his footnoting was much too sloppy to be a model for scholars today. But various forms of footnotes were used long before von Ranke. Sources were of vital importance to both Roman lawyers and Christian theologians in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as they strove to back up their own arguments with the weight and gravitas of others…

The history– and importance– of annotation: “History’s Footnotes,” @scaliger via @JSTOR_Daily.

* Noel Coward

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As we check our references, we might spare a thought for James MacGregor Burns; he died on this date in 2014. A historian and political scientist, he is best known for his biographies of American Presidents; his work on America’s 32nd president, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in History and Biography in 1971.

His work was influential in the field of leadership studies, shifting its focus from the traits and actions of “great men” to the interaction of leaders and their constituencies as collaborators working toward mutual benefit.

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