No art historian has ever put forward an alchemical interpretation to the representation of St George slaying the dragon...Indeed, I imagine not.
The Problem With Rewarding Novelty in Scholarship
If you want to get hired or tenure, you have to get published. If you want to get published, you need to say something novel. Thus:
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3 comments:
I think it is a problem of finding the right measure for mastery.
Not to pick a nit, or anything, but from James' link:
The student cannot create a new ancient Greek play[.]
Why not? If the student has done his homework, and perhaps even some...self-actualized...research, he knows the forms of (Attic) Greek plays, their structures, the purposes (to Attic Greeks) of plays, and so on.
The student's own original Attic Greek play may be utterly atrocious and unfit even for this far off-Broadway, but he should be able to demonstrate his mastery by producing his own original.
Or recite his own epic poem, even if he has all the rhythm of a rock.
Eric Hines
The other way to do a dissertation to to attack an older hypothesis, using new/more recent/different data. That's what I did: take a hypothesis about the relationship between river management and federal involvement and looked at a river no one had studied.
Of course, I am the one who wrote an undergrad English Lit final paper about the use of Medieval fertility imagery and animal symbols in "King Lear." The professor loved it.
LittleRed1
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