In fiction, authors frequently make references to other works. Some are very clear and obvious to almost any reader, but others are much more subtle and difficult to detect. These references get even harder to notice as the time between the publication of the book and the actual reading of the text occurs. Fortunately for us lay people, we have English majors to sort all this stuff out for us and produce books like this:
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| Is it just me or does this book get brought up a lot in this class? |
One place we do not expect to find these hidden references is in works of non-fiction, particularly scholarly books. These books are usually heavily footnoted by the authors so that one is never left in any doubt of the precise sources of any given idea or quote. Sadly, this was not always the case. Ancient historians used to quote or refer to the works of other authors and simply expect their audience to recognized borrowed passages or veiled allusions. Considering that the pool of written work was considerably smaller at the time, perhaps this was not an unreasonable assumption. However, scholars now have horrible time trying to sort out who borrowed what from whom, especially when half the source material has not survived the ravages of time. So, I would go back to the late 5th century B.C. when the writing of works of history was still in its infancy and introduce proper citation methods. This would also have the added bonus of finally giving the field of Classical Studies a generally accepted citation format rather than the hodgepodge of styles that exists now. Nothing earth shattering, I'll admit, but it should save some scholars a few headaches and will certainly make undergrad life simpler for those poor lost souls in Classical Studies.
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| Still no relief from the incredibly dry style. I'm a librarian, not a miracle worker. |
Eric, I think your trip to the past ties in so nicely with the ideas of inter-textuality that came up in the discussion of MLK during the sound and video lecture.
ReplyDeleteI once had a librarian tell me that if listing your sources in your bibliography is so important to the practice of scholarship and librarianship, then the field is about mutuality. The sharing of ideas, and the ways in which others ideas are important to the subsequent creation of new ideas points to the constructionist meta-theories on information.
After you got back from the past would you be excited to see assignments specifying the use of "Bradshaw Citation Style (BCS)?"
I like that connection with the MLK lecture. That's exactly the kind of thing I was trying to get across. To people who get the reference, its obvious where it came from, but for those who don't it seems like an original idea.
DeleteI would be stoked to see assignments written in BCS. Actually, now that I think about it, the implications of a citation style developing that early are more wide spread than just making my undergrad less difficult. Would APA or MLA even have been developed if there was a longstanding citation style from ancient Greece? I prefer to think that some time in the future I've already gone back to the past and gotten the BCS implemented in the works of a few authors, but their works haven't survived.