As I’m currently reading a critical edition of a Victorian novel which feels the need to tell me who Mozart and Marie Antoinette were, I am wondering what everyone else thinks about explanatory notes. Are they necessary at all? Should they be confined to the appendices as endnotes? Is it appropriate to explain only the most abstruse terms, or should a very basic level of knowledge be assumed? My personal bête noir (if you’ll excuse the irony) is great swathes of untranslated French. Where does one draw the line?
I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts. Answers on a cleft stick, or leave a comment below.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I can see the benefit of such notes to some readers, and if your publisher is keen to sell the books into markets where knowledge of Mozart is abstruse, then there may be a call for them. But since we now have access to thousands of reference tools through the internet, I think they could be dispensed with. If nothing else, the reader is being deprived of the fun of of finding out what those words mean. We don’t generally define words that are rare but in current use; we expect readers to be able to use a dictionary. They can use the net, or even an actual encyclopedia, in the same way, and will learn lots of other things in the process, like how to use a reference tool.
If they must be there, then I’d rather footnotes than endnotes. It’s quite tiresome to turn to an endnote on Prince Albert, thinking you are going to find that the author had some particular relationship with him, only to be told that he was German and married to Queen Victoria, and then find you’ve lost your place in the novel.
It’s funny you should mention untranslated French, because I always get annoyed at footnotes for that–I think the note must be something interesting, then I lose my place only to find out something I already knew (i.e., the English), which is the same trouble as letting you know who Mozart is.
I do like explanatory notes though because they have the potential to be so valuable. It’s really about giving info that you can’t actually look up yourself because you have no way of knowing you should try–some allusion to a now-obscure novel that you would never even realize was anything special in the text without a real specialist to tell you.
Many thanks for your input, Nicole and Catalpa. I shall bear your thoughts in mind for my next critical edition.