Anecdote

A anecdote of the Greek α privative suffix and εχδοτος : new , is a historical characteristic, a feature of manners or of character, a secondary detail of the action, a little story which is told pleasantly and are retained easily because calling upon the feelings: Humor, horror… and whose transmission orally is, consequently, easy.

This word was initially used, in its original etymological direction, like titrates collections of works published for the first time: such are the Anecdota græca of Muratori, Bekker, etc, the Thesaurus anecdotorum of Mortara.

The history filled of anecdotes could be regarded as acceptable since the writer did not post a claim with the history. Holy-Beuve, which can appear as well in the history as the literary criticism was shown, in these two kinds, as anecdotier as Tallemant of Réaux of which he however said “as he had been born anecdotier, as the Fountain had been born fablier”.

Art to tell an anecdote makes most of the charm of the Conversation. The oratorical kind does not push back either the anecdote which pricks curiosity and holds the spirits outstanding. The Fountain said in connection with an Athenian speaker, awaking his audience by an anecdotic account that:

… If Peau of Ass were told to me,

I would take an extreme pleasure there.

The anecdote also held, at a certain time, a great place in literary journalism. During the Second Empire, when the legislation prohibited with the press to be dealt with policy, this one was disguised there under the name of “News with the hand”, of “Noises of the day”, “Chronicle”, “Echoes”. Anecdotic journalism has the most success in the regions where the citizens can the least take part in the public thing.

Any author who wishes to show intellectual rigor must find a source reliable to support the anecdote, for example the Témoignage of a chronicler of the court to check the authenticity of a reported remark of a large lord. The chronicles differ especially from the history by the profusion of the anecdotic details which make them slip into a tiresome pewter readily raised of scandal. The historian should neither lavish the anecdote, nor to neglect it. To banish the anecdote by an exaggerated feeling of the dignity of the history, can contain it in a pompeuse, contrary general information with the intelligence of the men and times. Certain anecdotes as that of the Vase of Soissons clarify one day very sharp manners and the institutions of the past, learns very long on the constitution from old the franque company, and proposes from it today many lines of thinking with the Historien of times Mérovingiens.

Mérimée said: “I like, in the history, only the anecdotes, and among the anecdotes I prefer those where I imagine to find a painting true of manners and characters. ” This preference of certain spirits and certain times for the anecdote however had its dangers and one can quote, with the number of the historians whom the abuse the characteristics discredited, Suétone that Voltaire called a “very suspect anecdotier”.

The anecdote is not without relationship with the Generally accepted idea, because it does not privilege particularly historical truth (little checking) and is very often reported, for example in the courses of history to wake up the attention.

Example

The king Henri IV, which could not reach the capacity without converting with Catholicism, would have declared: “Paris is worth a mass”.

Derived

It made of it the “anecdotic” term, often pejorative, which means that which one speaks is minor, without much importance, laughable, useless, and which it does not deserve to be at the side of the remainder of the account.

Examples:

  • the culture of the Sisal is from now on anecdotic with the Mexico, to mean that the culture of the sisal is still present there, but in a very minority way.
  • the candlestick has in certain religions a big role, in particular the Menorah. In an anecdotic way, it is one of the weapons of the crime to be solved in the Board game Cluedo .

Source

  • Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 97-8

See too

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