Ruth Finnegan Why Do We Quote? “The Culture and History of Quotation ” To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/75 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. 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 224 Confuted’, Sydney, 1901 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.