Footnotes

[stoutfellow]

I finally set about reading the copy of Jane Eyre that I bought back in January. It's an interesting enough story so far - I'm just past Rochester's first appearance - but I'm a bit annoyed by the footnoting. There are two sets of footnotes. One set is numbered; they appear at the end of the text, and mostly identify quoted passages. Some of the passages identified are (to my mind) well-known bits of the Bible, which Brontë's nineteenth-century readers would surely know; I assume that this set of notes is due to the modern editor.

The other set is marked by the usual set of symbols - asterisks, daggers, etc. - and serve to identify possibly-obscure words. Some of these define words which have a different meaning in Jane's dialect than in standard British English; some translate passages in French or Latin; and quite a few describe articles of clothing or types of fabric. This is useful enough, I suppose, but what sense is there in (on the one hand) telling me that merino is a type of wool and, on the other, letting pass without comment the word "prenomen"?

Addendum: As it happens, I know what a prenomen is. But what's a kneedle?

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Yes, Jane is a very well-drawn character, and that is exactly what such a person would say.

You might find the third item in this essay (http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2006/07/scattered_musin.html) interesting.

[filkferengi]

Good points; thanks!