Ruth Finnegan Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation “ WHY DO WE QUOTE? THE CULTURE AND HISTORY OF QUOTATION Ruth Finnegan is Visiting Research Professor and Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996 and an Hon. Fellow of Somerville College Oxford in 1997; and was awarded an OBE for services to Social Sciences in 2000. Her publications include Limba Stories and Story-Telling 1967, 1981; Oral Literature in Africa , 1970; Modes of Thought (joint ed.), 1973; Oral Poetry , 1977, 1992); Information Technology: Social Issues (joint ed.), 1987; Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication , 1988; The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town , 1989 and 2007; Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts , 1992; South Pacific Oral Traditions (joint ed.), 1995; Tales of the City: A Study of Narrative and Urban Life , 1998; Communicating: The Multiple Modes of Human Interconnection , 2002; Participating in the Knowledge Society: Researchers Beyond the University Walls (ed.), 2005; The Oral and Beyond: Doing Things with Words in Africa , 2007. Ruth Finnegan Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation Cambridge 2011 Open Book Publishers CIC Ltd., 40 Devonshire Road, Cambridge, CB1 2BL, United Kingdom http://www.openbookpublishers.com @ 2011 Ruth Finnegan Some rights are reserved. This book is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. This license allows for copying any part of the work for personal and non-commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Details of allowances and restrictions are available at: http://www.openbookpublishers.com As with all Open Book Publishers titles, digital material and resources associated with this volume are available from our website: http://www.openbookpublishers.com ISBN Hardback: 978-1-906924-34-8 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-906924-33-1 ISBN Digital (pdf): 978-1-906924-35-5 All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) Certified. Printed in the United Kingdom and United States by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers To the many voices that have shaped and resounded in my own, above all those of my family, past and present. A confusion of quoting terms. Design © Mark Cain www.cmk.net Contents Page Preface xi Acknowledgements xiv Abbreviations and Note on Sources xvii I. SETTING THE PRESENT SCENE 1 1. Prelude: A Dip in Quoting’s Ocean 3 2. Tastes of the Present: The Here and Now of Quoting 13 2.1. ‘Here and now’? 13 2.2. What are people quoting today? 15 2.3. Gathering and storing quotations 33 3. Putting Others’ Words on Stage: Arts and Ambiguities of Today’s Quoting 43 3.1. Signalling quotation 43 3.2. When to quote and how 55 3.3. To quote or not to quote 63 3.4. So why quote? 74 II. BEYOND THE HERE AND NOW 77 4. Quotation Marks: Present, Past, and Future 79 4.1. What are quote marks and where did they come from? 80 4.2. What do they mean? 95 4.3. Do we need them? 108 5. Harvesting Others’ Words: The Long Tradition of Quotation Collections 113 5.1. A present-day example: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 114 5.2. Forerunners in the written Western tradition 120 5.3. Where did they come from? 141 5.4. Why collect quotations? 147 viii Why Do We Quote? 6. Quotation in Sight and Sound 153 6.1. Quoting and writing – inseparable twins? 154 6.2 The wealth of oral quotation 159 6.3 Quoting blossoms in performance 167 6.4 Music, script and image 173 7. Arts and Rites of Quoting 183 7.1 Frames for others’ words and voices 184 7.1.1 Narrative and its plural voices 184 7.1.2. Poetry 188 7.1.3 Exposition and rhetoric 189 7.1.4 Ritual and sacred texts 192 7.1.5 Play 195 7.1.6 Displayed text 197 7.2. An array of quoting arts 198 7.3. How do the thousand flowers grow and who savours them? 212 8. Controlling Quotation: The Regulation of Others’ Words and Voices 221 8.1. Who plants and guards the flowers? Imitation, authorship, and plagiarism 223 8.2. Constraining and allowing quotation: flower or weed? 232 8.3. The fields where quoting grows 246 III. DISTANCE AND PRESENCE 253 9. What Is Quotation and Why Do We Do It? 255 9.1. So what is it? 256 9.2. The far and near of quoting 259 9.3. Why quote? 264 Appendix 1. Quoting the Academics 267 Background to this study: citing the authorities 267 Academics quoting 279 Appendix 2. List of the Mass Observation Writers 287 References 299 Index 321 List of Illustrations Page 1.1 ‘If it weren’t for the last minute...’ 3 1.2 ‘Dad turns out all right’ 4 1.3 War memorial, Church Green Road, Bletchley, November 2009 6 1.4 Graveyard quoting 8 2.1 Example of extract from a mass observer’s comment 16 2.2 An 85 year-old widow’s quoting 20 2.3 Sayings in ‘our circle of friends’ 30 2.4 A large collection of quotation books 39 3.1 ‘I was suddenly conscious of the quote marks’ 47 4.1 New English Bible , Oxford, 1961, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-6 81 4.2 Revised Standard Bible , New York, 1946, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-6 82 4.3 Reina-Valera Bible (Spanish), web version, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-6 82 4.4 Holy Bible, King James Version , Oxford and Cambridge, 19th century, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-6 83 4.5 New Testament (Greek) London, 1885, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-5 83 4.6 The Newe Testament, translated into English by William Tyndale, Worms, 1526, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-6 84 4.7 The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteined in the Olde and Newe Testament, Geneva, 1560, Matthew, Chapter 21 verses 1-7 85 4.8 Diple marks in an 8th-century manuscript: Bede’s Commentary on Proverbs 87 4.9 Scribal citation marks, 7th to 9th centuries AD 88 4.10 Laurence Sterne, Yorick’s Sentimental Journey , Dublin, 1769 91 4.11 The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies , London, 1802 93 x Why Do We Quote? 5.1 First page of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations , 7th edition, 2009 115 5.2 Page from the 1st edition of Macdonnel’s Dictionary, London, 1797 123 5.3 Title page of American edition based on Macdonnel’s Dictionary , Philadelphia, 1854 126 5.4 Roundel of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, in Adages, Basel, 1533 127 5.5 From an early manuscript of Thomas of Ireland’s Manipulus florum 134 5.6 Richard Taverner’s edition of Cato’s Distichs with Erasmus’ commentary, London, 1540 139 5.7 The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers printed by William Caxton, London, 1477 143 5.8 From the world’s earliest proverb collection: inscribed clay tablet from ancient Sumer 148 6.1 Nepalese shaman communicating with the ancestors in trance 164 6.2 A calligraphic declaration of faith 177 6.3 The entry into Jerusalem: Isabella Breviary, 15th century 178 6.4 ‘To hunt hares with a drum’ 179 6.5 ‘Two dogs over one bone seldom agree’ 180 6.6 Ashanti goldweight proverb 181 7.1 ‘Lord Randal’ 187 7.2 The Ten Commandments on Buckland Beacon 198 7.3 and Frontispiece: A confusion of quoting terms 213 8.1 ‘In Defence of Robert Burns. The Charge of Plagiarism Confuted’, Sydney, 1901 224 8.2 King Henry VIII’s Proclamation prohibiting unlicensed printing, London, 1538 233 8.3 The Roman Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books, Rome, 1559 234 8.4 Gibbon accused of misquotation and plagiarism, London, 1778 237 Preface Until this book somehow crept under my guard I hadn’t thought I was much interested in quoting or quotation: something to be deployed with care in some settings, no doubt, but not a thing to be investigated. Certainly I had learned to use quote marks at school and later to wield quotations in academic writing, and had become aware of copyright obligations and the current concerns about plagiarism and about unauthorised words floating free on the web. I was also vaguely aware that words and voices from elsewhere ran through what I said, I read them in books, recognised them in formal speeches, heard them in conversation. But I had just come to accept this as part of common practice, not anything to be really noticed, far less to arouse particular curiosity. As I thought about it, I realised how little I knew about quoting and quotation. What does it mean, this strange human propensity to repeat chunks of text from elsewhere and to echo others’ voices? How does it work and where did it come from? Does it matter? Why, anyway, do we quote? I started by reflecting more carefully on my own experience and was startled by how quoting permeated my world. And then I wondered how others were using, or not using, quotation both nearby and in far away times and places. On some aspects I found a vast and fascinating literature. But there seemed no single account that directly tackled my questions about just what ‘quotation’ and ‘quoting’ were, how we had got to where we now are, and how in practice these had been used and conceptualised. This led me to considering how people here and now actually use quotation (in practice, that is, not just according to the grammar books) and also, going on from that, whether we might understand these present practices better by exploring something of their background and whether the problems currently causing concern belong just to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, or perhaps have longer roots. xii Why Do We Quote? Before I could move on to those wider issues I needed to devote some serious attention to examining what I call the ‘here and now’. So the book begins from a lengthy example from contemporary England. Looking at the present gave me the interest and incentive to dig down further into what lies behind it. For the ways we and others quote now are not just random. Even the small matter of quote marks turns out to have a complex history of development and cultural controversy behind it. I hasten to add that this is not intended as a comprehensive history, certainly not a chronological narrative through from the ‘beginning’, or even systematically through a few centuries of Western history – either would be impossibly ambitious. Rather it uses a series of small case studies to sketch some historical background to where we are today and throw greater light on both past and present. It is only a limited study and largely – though certainly not exclusively – biased towards the products and practices of Western culture. But even that, I found, helped to put some perspective on the practices of today and both the recurrent and the changing patterns behind them. This book is upside down from many monographs. In moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar and back, its ordering is to go backwards from the present to the past rather than the other way round, and outwards from the nearby to the further-off. It’s in an unusual order in another way too: the first part begins with the personal and local rather than the conventional prolegomena about scholarly literature and theoretical rationale. That academic gesture mostly comes in Appendix 1 and to a smaller extent the footnotes. Between them these two have a dual role for they also function as a pertinent example of the quote-heavy academic style which is currently a prominent setting for quotation. I’m not sure when the idea of doing a study of quoting first hit me. But once it did it I began to realise that contrary to my first presupposition I was in fact intensely interested in the subject and had been for some time. It converged with themes with which I’ve long been engaged. Being drilled in the contrast of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ reported speech in my earlier classical studies (not just grammar but an immutable law of the universe, it seemed), learning correct referencing modes, tussling with differing American and British citation conventions in journal editing, grading student essays, warning about plagiarising, arguing over quotation in oral as against written communication, or contemplating the transmission of wisdom over the ages and who controls it, the beauties of allusion and Preface xiii intertextuality in verbal arts, and the multiply-voiced dialogic processes of communication – all this gives a long background to my interest in the words and voices of others. So too does the elusive question of how we interrelate with voices from other places, and, something that in my earlier work on communicating I found most intractable of all, from other times. Acknowledgements Let me start by expressing my gratitude to the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Sociology discipline in the Open University not just for research support but also – even more treasured – for their long-continuing warm colleagueship. I also acknowledge with thanks the many libraries and archives from whose resources I have benefited, above all the British Library, the Archives of the Oxford University Press, and the Open University’s Library, that unfailing support over so many years, both on the spot and through its amazing electronic resources and its great Inter Library Loan service. I have been fortunate indeed in my long association with the Open University, its staff and its ideals. I have very special thanks to the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex and its staff who assisted so generously and patiently in this work (especially Fiona Courage, Jessica Scantlebury and Dorothy Sheridan) and, above all, to the wonderful panel of Mass Observation writers for their thoughtful, full and challenging responses to the autumn 2006 Mass Observation ‘Directive’ about quoting and quotation. Their perceptive commentaries underpin this book. I also acknowledge with real gratitude the help I have received from friends and colleagues, as well as from scholars who responded in a spirit of generous scholarly cooperation to queries over the internet. Those who have contributed to the long genesis of this text are legion, whether by direct suggestions, by sharing their resources, or just – and this too was greatly appreciated – by their active interest or quiet encouragement. They are too many to list individually but let me at least thank Karin Barber, Anna Bonifazi, Bill Bytheway, Tom Cheesman, the late Desmond Costa, John Miles Foley, Graham Furniss, Marie Gillespie, Michael Hancher, Werner Kelber, Michael Knibb, Elizabeth Knowles, Robert Murray, Chris Nighman (special thanks for his expert assistance on Manipulus florum ), Martin Orwin, Anne Seaton (whose email comments are always a delight), Amy Shuman, Paul Smith, Brian Street, Rosalind Thomas, Jason Toynbee, Mark Turin, Acknowledgements xv Brian Watson, and David Wilson. I recall too with great appreciation the friendly reception and constructive comments I received at the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City in 2004 where I first dipped my toes into this vast subject in a nervous plenary lecture. I am also extremely grateful to the publisher’s anonymous reviewer whose thorough reading and advice saved me from many errors. May I also thank those who have helped me with the illustrations and with IT problems generally: in earlier years John Hunt (still a source of support), more recently Sue Searle and, especially, the ever patient Fleur LeCroissette, the IT wizard in the Open University’s Social Science Faculty. And to these thanks let me add, as ever, my appreciation of the huge contribution by David Murray, not just his photographs and his active support but also for the many paths, intellectual and other, that we have shared over the years. I must not omit to voice my appreciation of Open Book Publishers. It was their unusual combination of vision and realism that drew me to them in the first place. It has also proved a pleasure working with them, in personal as well as professional terms. In more formal vein I acknowledge with gratitude the many permissions to reproduce copyright material. For the illustrations: Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive (Figs 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.1); The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (Fig. 4.8: MS Bodley 819 fol 16; Fig. 4.9 (2): Ms Bibl b 2 (P) f14); Durham Cathedral (Fig. 4.9 (1): C.IV.8 fly leaf); The British Library Board (Fig. 4.9 (3): Additional Ms 11878 f 45v; Fig. 5.2: 11602.cc.8; Fig. 5.6: 1460.a.32 title page; Fig. 6.3: BL Images online 021635; Fig. 8.1: YA.1995.a.2049 title page; Fig. 8.4: T.1948 (1) title page); the Secretary to the Delegates of Oxford University Press (Fig. 5.1); Bibliothèque nationale de France (Fig. 5.5: BnF Ms lat. 15985f4r); The Penn Museum (Fig. 5.8: object # B6139); Dr Sara Shneiderman (Fig. 6.1); The Walters Art Museum Baltimore Maryland (Fig. 6.4); The Trustees of the British Museum (Fig. 6.6); The Houghton Library, Harvard University (Fig. 8.3: *93HR-7045). Also sincere thanks to David Wilson (Fig. 4.10), David Murray (Fig. 4.11) and Kenneth Cragg (Fig. 6.2) for their courtesy in allowing me to reproduce material in their possession, to Brigid Duffield for her calligraphic gift (Fig. 1.1), to David Murray again for his photographs (Figs 1.3, 1.4, 7.2) and to Mark Cain (www.cmk.net) for his design (Frontispiece and Fig. 7.3). For textual material: the Secretary to the Delegates of Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce material from the Oxford University Press Archives and the Modern Quotations xvi Why Do We Quote? Dictionaries Survey; Faber & Faber for the poem ‘This Be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin (first published in Philip Larkin High Windows, Faber & Faber, 1974); and, with very special gratitude, Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive for allowing me to reproduce extensive quotations from the material produced by the panel of writers responding to the Mass Observation Archive Directive sent out in autumn 2006, material which forms a key element in this volume: my heartfelt thanks both to the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive and (let me repeat) to its panel of writers. Clearing copyright permissions is a tedious and irksome task, but I would like to express my thanks not only to the organisations concerned, but also to those individuals whose humanity and warmth added a touch of enjoyment to the process, in particular Gordon Wise of the Curtis Brown Group, Catherine Turner of the Durham Cathedral Library, Ruth Bowler at the Walters Art Museum, Martin Maw of the Oxford University Press Archives, and Auste Mickunaite of the British Library. In a few cases copyright holders could not be traced or did not respond despite our efforts. The publishers would be glad to hear from any that have been omitted. Abbreviations and Note on Sources Mass observers, British observers/ commentators Participant observers/commentators from Mass Observation panel consulted Autumn 2006 (see Chapter 2, Appendix 1 and Appendix 2) MO/xxxxx Code number of individual commentator from the Mass Observation panel, Autumn 2006 (full list, Appendix 2), archived in Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex Library, Brighton, UK CWE Erasmus, Desiderius (1982- ) Collected Works of Erasmus , English translation, Toronto: University of Toronto Press ODQ Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (numerals indicate edition) OUP Archives Oxford University Press Archives, Oxford, UK OUP survey 2006 Oxford University Press, Oxford Modern Quotations Dictionaries Survey 2006 I have generally followed the usual academic conventions for referencing and citing primary and secondary sources, but rather than too much peppering of the text have often gathered these in footnotes. I have not attempted to provide detailed references for the many well-known quotations mentioned; to solemnly add a citation for each would make this book unbearably ponderous especially given that readers can readily consult the many print and web collections if they wish to follow up the (often contentious) questions of author, exact wording or origins. Also, since this work is directed to the general rather than specialist reader I have mostly opted for English translations of texts in foreign languages. I. SETTING THE PRESENT SCENE