Historiogaffe

I can't speak to that specialization; that said I've heard UBC is strong in it. (I asked my undergrad supervisor what grad students tend to come to our program for.) A friend of mine is going to Brown for pre-1945 U.S.

The short answer is, searching for a program is a big stressor, made up for by the feeling of finding a program that looks like it would be a perfect fit.


The way I've looked for programs—and it's time-intensive and feels a bit like stalking—is to comb through places looking through professor profiles. (And yes, "places" is as large and vague a a number as it sounds.) Since most programs have a "by specialization" listing, it's fairly easy. Look through everyone in that category and see if there are two, three, or more profs who make you go "Good LORD yes" and then take note of that university.

A starting point will be, if you find them floating around, lists on these forums, Livejournal, those "top 15 programs in [x] specialization" sites... but then you have to look through them for your particular interest; the theoretical approach you like; etc. So, perhaps, try starting here: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/postbellum-american-literature-rankings It's not a very wide range in terms of tier, obviously, and many of the ones above #10 or so show up at the top of pretty much every list of specializations—but it's a starting point.

For a more extensive and broader listing, try taking some cues from http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/arts-humanities/english

A more effective method: take note of recent scholarship you're fond of/irrationally in love with, and see where the profs who've written those pieces work. Also, see where those profs went for their respective PhDs.

My two cents, based on my inference from two years' worth of vigorous Grad Cafe and applyingtograd stalking:

The general wisdom for English programs—as distinct from others such as the hard sciences or law—is that your numbers should be your area of least concern; the CV is an honourary member of the "numbers" category. If you've presented at five conferences but your statement of purpose doesn't blow anyone away, you won't get into the program; if you've never been to a conference but your statement of purpose blows everyone away, you stand a much stronger chance of getting in. (Though, with today's academic market, that might as well say "you stand a chance of getting in.")

They do look good on a CV, but more for rhetorical effect than as items that will give you a qualitative leg up. The chorus of Things That Matter will always be "Statement of purpose, writing sample, LORs."

As for the difference between MA-holding candidates and straight-from-BA candidates, this conversation happens at least once a year and the consensus is always "it depends." It depends on the school: some (e.g. Yale) prefer to hone you from day one, with a kind of monogamous approach to their pedigree. Others (though fewer and fewer) require an MA in hand—I've found these are usually rhetoric rather than literature programs, e.g. Syracuse—and a bunch more (e.g. Berkeley, UT-Austin) can go either way. I don't know about Princeton.

The difference is that, as an MA-holding applicant, you'll be expected to have a much more refined idea of what you want to study; and you will to some degree be expected to have "real-world" experience in terms of conference presentations. (Not publications.) The bar is higher for MA-holders, but in a way only because an MA-holder should, logically, be better prepared—they've done 1-2 years of grad school, they've got an extra degree... etc. You should basically not sound interchangeable with a BA-only applicant.

The fact that you are literally considering trolling these literature boards is indicative of not "being ready" for any PhD program.

Is this related to graduate English programs? It's a bit presumptuous to approach a bunch of English specialists and expect them to help with your grammar.

That said, we often can't resist, so: the sentence would mean the same thing without the word "any."

Is this related to graduate English programs? It's a bit presumptuous to approach a bunch of English specialists and expect them to help with your grammar.

That said, we often can't resist, so: the sentence would mean the same thing without the word "any."

I'm a bit late following up but I think ZeeMore21, jakebarnes and truckbasket have really covered a lot of important ground! And in a far less circuitous manner than myself. At the risk of sounding perhaps a bit officious, I do have some more advice, mostly building off of the splendid suggestions you have received so far from others. I echo what's been said about how great it is that you're seeking advice now, while you're still in undergrad. I wish I had been as diligent and prepared my junior year as you seem to be! It's perfectly alright that you're still not 100% sure about your plans. You probably won't be until well into your graduate education, so be ready for a few years of relative uncertainty and continually evolving plans and interests. At least you admit that your theoretical interests are still developing. Good for you because you do have a very, very long road ahead of you. Trust me, it's better that we're telling you all of this now as opposed to just before you approach writing your dissertation in grad school. To re-cap some of the most (in my opinion) helpful advice I and others have offered you: you should, on the one hand, read more widely and give certain schools of thought a chance, and on the other hand, you should work on narrowing down your focus somewhat. Both will be indispensable for putting together a strong and successful grad school application and then for succeeding in grad school once you start.

While I'm unequivocally and emphatically in the anti-Harold Bloom camp, I can't possibly expect you to ditch him if you find that you're truly passionate about his ideas. After all, grad school is all the more rewarding if you're passionate about your work. (If you're not, it can really be hell, and you'll find many an anecdote - dare I say, horror story - on The Grad Cafe about this) And academia is definitely about constructive dialogue between scholars that may not (and indeed don't always) agree. However, as I and others have stressed repeatedly, if you want to have a shot at succeeding in academia (i.e. getting into grad school in the first place, doing well there and then eventually finding a job) please, please, please - even if it's just for your own edification - challenge yourself to entertain some non-canonical perspectives on aesthetics! While Yale's English department is, surely, very difficult to get into (and I know you haven't expressed interest in this particular department; it's just an example), to put it bluntly, the fact alone that Harold Bloom is a faculty member there probably wouldn't be anywhere near enough to guarantee you any semblance of a decent shot at admission to that particular program (that is, assuming your interests remain close-minded and unfocused when it comes time to apply). The same goes for all the Harold Blooms in academia (and there are certainly a few out there)! The truth is, whether you like it or not, "traditionalist" scholars (to use your own term) are far outnumbered in the professoriate by those who care a great deal for more progressive and inclusive discourses and scholarship. This isn't to discourage you from being an empowered voice of dissent... If you feel that this is your calling, by all means go for it! But then that's all the more reason not to ignore cultural studies because, as someone astutely pointed out earlier, you'd be shutting out your main interlocutors! How could you ever produce substantive and nuanced scholarship - indeed how could you ever bloom as a scholar at all - if you limit yourself to good old Harry's (antediluvian) worldview?

I have some more advice regarding your issue with period specialization. While the field I know the most about is French literature, I'm relatively sure that there is considerable enough structural overlap with English literature and even with Comp Lit that it wouldn't be completely irrelevant for me to offer it as an example. Take a look at Berkeley's expectations for specialization (http://french.berkeley.edu/grad/guide/grad_guide.php). I'm pointing out their approach because it's a pretty common one in literature departments. Here's a concise excerpt to sum it up, but do read further because it goes a bit more in depth:

"To a large extent, students design their own programs of study, within guidelines set out by the Department and with the advice and assistance of faculty members. The guidelines are meant to ensure the necessary professional specialization in a field within French studies, to point toward the area of an eventual dissertation, and to prepare the student in a general way for research in that area. Each student is asked to define three areas of study within French literature. Each of the areas, while related to the others, obliges the student to view the discipline from a different perspective.

The areas of study for the Ph.D. in French literature are:

1. the work of a single major author;
2. a historical period in French literature;
3. the development of a genre, theme or carefully-delineated topic extending over a period of three centuries."

Approaches will definitely vary from one literature department to the next, but the expectation that one will strike a balance between breadth and specialization is essentially and inevitably a given in all literature departments. If you don't like this, I'll be as candid as others have been: you may not be cut out to pursue graduate studies in literature. Another recommendation I have for you is: check out a bunch of department websites in the fields of English and Comp Lit, since they may align most closely with your background and current training. Take a look at the following three things on each website: current grad students' interests, the faculty's interests and recently submitted dissertations. While grad students earlier in their programs (e.g. in their first, second and even sometimes in their third year) are typically still figuring out their interests, among the more advanced doctoral candidates and certainly among the faculty, you will notice almost exclusively specialists. (Remember, this doesn't mean that you have to radically limit yourself to one sole idea... Indeed, you'll see several grad students and professors who work on more than one time period, on several authors, and who approach their work through various theoretical lenses) You'll also notice that most grad students in literature are trained to grapple with theory. Unless you aspire to become the next Michel Foucault (which isn't even a feasible goal in the first place and I don't think anyone seriously aspires to do so; I mean, it either happens or it doesn't based on both the quality and innovation of your work as well as on factors you can't possibly control like your work's reception in academia and society at large), dubbing yourself the "theory specialist" will not help you succeed in academe. You will just be one theory nerd in a sea of many others and if you don't strive to be more open-minded, those other theory nerds will be way more competitive than you in the job market. You said:



To be perfectly frank, precisely because the job market is so abysmal you must get over your aversion to specialize otherwise you'll never make it in academia. To answer your question succinctly: no, at least not in literature departments. Yet even interdisciplinary programs will expect you to care about and focus on the historical context of your interests, so the answer is unmistakably no for grad school programs in the humanities and social sciences in general. You won't find hiring committees say, "we're looking for a theorist to fill this position." If that were the case, in literature and certainly in interdisciplinary programs, the majority of applicants would be, to some extent, potential candidates. (Ok, an occasion in which they might say that is when they're looking for a specialist in, say, 19th and/or 20th century and contemporary literature and criticism, but again, that requires specializing in that entire historical period and not just a few isolated ideas about aesthetics)

Luckily you still have time! If you decide that specialization and literature aren't your cup of tea, then there are certainly more interdisciplinary paths to pursue! I would reiterate my suggestion that you look for departments in both traditional and interdisciplinary fields (e.g. English, Comp Lit and Philosophy as well as programs like the ones for which several of us have offered you links). Take your target number of grad programs (I applied to 6 but you might want to apply to more than that) and split it however you see fit between traditional and interdisciplinary options (e.g. 50/50; 33.3/66.6; 25/75... you get the idea). Or you may find that you want to apply solely to interdisciplinary programs and that would be alright, too!

Sorry once again for my long response. I know that you've been appreciative of our "tough love" so far but I think you'll be even more grateful for it later! I know I wish some nice grad students had guided me when I was in your shoes. Trust me, like you, I used to believe that I could specialize purely in theory and I also didn't care for being restricted to one particular period in literature. In my experience, while I definitely had a handful of undergraduate friends and peers who were, to varying degrees, also keen on studying theory, I found that, overall, it was decidedly not a popular route for undergrads. I did feel somewhat isolated at the beginning. However, I eventually found exciting company among my classmates in graduate-level seminars. Perhaps this might just be the dynamic at Princeton, but I have a feeling that in general, undergrads passionate enough about theory to continue pursuing it at the graduate level are a relatively small crowd. (There may be a lot of them on this site, but then again, this is a pretty self-selecting group of people... Emphasis on the word "pretty," of course ) In all seriousness, though, if you find that this is the case at your school, too, then see if you can enroll in a grad seminar or two and try to meet others with similar affinities! In a way, I feel like I'm offering advice to a slightly younger version of myself... Though a key difference between us may be that I discovered my passion for theory in a Queer studies class my sophomore year in college... but that's a whole other story.

Some final thoughts: give yourself time to explore and discover your interests. Also, set a short-term goal (e.g. the rest of undergrad) of finding a stimulating thesis topic about which you're really passionate which could eventually double as your writing sample for your grad school applications. And remember that you don't have to specialize in this exact area in grad school (though you may well find it to be a useful starting point). You might even end up going in a completely new direction later on, and that's alright and even expected! But you will have a hard time even getting into grad school if you don't make an effort to focus your interests now and to be more open-minded as you do so. Make use of the resources you have in college; work closely with your professors; keep nurturing your drive to be independent but realize that it's alright to feel lost and it's perfectly respectable to ask for help. Sorry for such a sappy ending to my post but I do believe that The Grad Cafe is an excellent place to look for grad school-related help when you need it. I certainly found this to be a tremendously useful community when I was applying and I owe my success, in part, to the wonderful advice I garnered here. I suppose this is my way of "paying it forward." Good luck, Two Espressos!

As a quick response to your latest post:



Those are all great ideas! I'm glad our advice has been helping you to put your interests into perspective. But don't give up on academia just yet. Yes, it's probably wise to have back-up plans, but it would be a shame to lose an individual as passionate about theory as you to, say, the corporate world! L L (You can always consider taking a gap year after undergrad - I did this - if you prefer to try other options before making the marriage proposal to academia, as a friend of mine once put it, semi-jokingly) You'll figure things out in due time and you're certainly on the right track!

Watch the forums? Really?

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I was going to make a similar comment about the description of rhet/comp. Writing centers is a small sub-field within the discipline, and it'd be difficult to characterize "the kind of work" done in rhet/comp tracks and departments: some schools are heavily focused on rhetorical theory, while others focus more on pedagogical practice. And rhetorical theory encompasses a huge range of focuses and conceptions in and of itself. Some schools focus on classical and epistemological rhetorics, while others think more socially (perhaps focusing on ethnography or discourse communities) and would more broadly define rhetoric as "making meaning."

At any rate, I don't mean to harp on this, as i realize you're not strongly considering it for your own scholarship. Just wanted to clear the record.

I unfortunately don't have any specific schools to recommend you add to your list, but I do have a bit of unsolicted advice!&nbsp;&nbsp;I recommend, as you continue adding to your list, that you ensure your schools represent a wider range of tiers/competitiveness (UT-Austin, for instance, is one of the most competitive rhet theory schools in the country).&nbsp;Of course, this would be far more helpful if I had suggestions for you. <div><br></div><div>Assistant profs: hard to say. One of my mentors here is really knowledgable, already well-known in his subfield (heard his name thrown around like candy at a recent conference), and is doing a crazy amount of research. But it's also possible you could end up with someone who seems really "green." &nbsp;Best advice is to try to visit schools when/if possible. (This strategy may be best once acceptances come in, next spring.)&nbsp;</div>

I've lived in both cities, and as much fun as I had in NYC, I would strangle puppies to get back to Oxford for another year of study.

I feel like such a cheerleader for this book, but Greg Semenza's "Graduate Study for the 21st Century" seems invaluable. It basically outlines the humanities graduate experience and provides excellent resources and suggestions for the whole process. Couldn't recommend it more.

Oh, and I'm going to BA to PhD too. I've already got my classes and syllabi for the fall, so I'm hoping to get some serious pre-reading done over the summer. Bracing myself for that first semester.

The bitter cynic in me agrees with you. But then again... when I see billionaire celebrities spending their money on plastering themselves with designer names and houses on every continent, it's refreshing to see someone who uses his money to better himself. If he was taking funding away from someone else to do this, then it would be unethical. But he's paying his way to spend his time learning and being immersed in an academic community. While we who are trying to start careers see it as somewhat superficial, I wish more people would spend their money on reading, writing, and critical thinking as what one does in their free time and on a whim like this guy does, even if it's obviously not going anywhere. He doesn't have to go anywhere, he's set.

What an odd and unnecessary insult to community college students and UCI students.

If you want not to sound like an arrogant jerk, better learn what nursing as a discipline involves. Hint: RNs are much too well-paid to change many bedpans. Second hint: When you're sick, you want a university-educated and board-certified RN acting as your patient advocate, your skilled caregiver, your care-planner, because you're going to see a doc (any doc) maybe twice a day for five minutes. Try not to point out to her (or him) your disdain for the profession, or your stereotypes. We don't take kindly to stupid.

My undergraduate SLAC dropped out of the USNWR rankings altogether, a move I supported from start to finish. I do think, however, that graduate programs, which are all pointed at least to an extent at the common goals of educating their students in a specific discipline and installing their graduates in tenure-track jobs, are a bit easier and more useful to rank.

That is not to say that rankings are justified in their present form; indeed, they are not. I think that what StrangeLight means when she says that "rankings are meaningless" is that "rankings should be meaningless." Sadly, that is not the case at all, and any applicant or current student would put themselves at a professional disadvantage by simply pretending that the rankings don't have an effect on the field. Here's why, in my opinion:

1. Those same professors who fill out those (highly unscientific) rankings questionnaires are also the professors who sit on departmental hiring committees. So if they think your program is sufficiently excellent to rank highly, that's more likely to reflect well on you as a graduate of that program and as a job applicant.

2. Following on Americana's contention, if a school has a fantastic record of securing funding and grants for its students, placing them well, etc., then they will do better in the rankings than a school that is less successful in such ways. This is a meaningful, and somewhat quantifiable, matter that no applicant should ignore.

3. Many undergraduate applicants, and the parents who foot the bills for their children's educations, want to see name brands attached to the school's faculty rolls. They see Harvard/Stanford/Yale and assume that they're getting the best education possible, helping to justify the cost of study. This is an unfortunate, but real, truth. A graduate from a ranked, branded school has an unfair job advantage in this regard. Again, unfair, but real, and certainly not "meaningless."

Lastly, Americana's tone has indeed been provocative (even unnecessarily so, though it had certainly inspired some impassioned and articulate responses, which is a good thing). But no one on this forum deserves to be flamed in such a way. A number of posters have questioned her character or made unqualified and baseless presumptions about her academic qualifications, and I find that to be fairly repulsive. Particularly 2BPHD's comment that "Yes you are too gud (sic) to admit… in any university." Do recall that ours is a phenomenally small community. 2BPHD, for all you know, Americana, however pompous she may be, could very well be sitting on your tenure committee some day. Learning to respect people is therefore more than polite; it's just good strategy.

This is a forum for academics and professionals, albeit nascent ones, and that kind of language does far too much to deteriorate the effectiveness of this conversation.

Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly true. I think you got a good answer and discounted it outright because it didn't fit with your preconceived notions of reality. I also wonder if some of the schools saw that in your application. Believe it or not, the Top 20's tend to be pretty oblivious sometimes, with the lower schools being a bit more astute because they attract a different type of "talent."

You are mixing up "feminist" and "about women."

It's very, very possible to study women from a non-feminist standpoint, and to study other topics (for example, how/why male archetypes change) from a feminist perspective.

I mean, if it's not what rocks your cradle, don't go for it, but don't dismiss it as "not about the Human Condition." For goodness' sake, the entire point of feminism is that women are humans!

Actually, I think Branwen is precisely NOT mixing up "feminism" and "about women," a mistake I think many people who think they want to go into feminist criticism make. A new historicist can honestly study the way a forgotten woman was informed by and helped to inform her cultural milieu. However, in my experience, feminist critics tend to begin with the premise that every decision and action throughout the whole of human history has been a deliberate and calculated attempted to screw over the female gender. (OK, maybe I am doing a little personal superimposing of my own by putting it in such hyperbolic terms, but you all get the idea. And I'm pretty sure somebody is going to turn this into a fairly spirited and entertaining discussion despite this retraction, which will, in turn, illustrate my point).

I'm with you, Branwen, on almost everything you said about criticism (ESPECIALLY DECONSTRUCTION). I find that I am drawn to new historicists more than others, though.

I am leaning toward this advice. Student4ever, I am not trying to make judgements about you, but you never used the word "love" in your post. In my own relationship, I would take the offer at his school without a second thought. I could never bear a long distance relationship, I have to see him every day. But that's me. Your situation is likely different, and so you have to weigh things. How deeply in love are you? Will you be resentful? Will he sacrifice for you? That type of thing.

With these decisions, there really isn't an objective point of view, per se – as these replies are evidencing. So, if you'd like my subjective two cents, I would go for Option B.

As strokeofmidnight mentioned, it's still funded – do you think the grands you'd be adding onto your debt would be manageable? The "follow the money" advice is good, but these are both offering you money, and I tend to take that advice as "don't drop yourself into unmanageable, decades-to-pay-off debt" – not as a code for, "whichever school offers you more money will clearly be a better fit and experience for you." Definitely consider the money, but consider it along with everything else. Campus environment? Profs? Students? Placements? You could even consider something like placement as a more long-term financial consideration.

Plus, American universities seem to go gaga for teaching experience.

It strikes me as indicative of the sort group circle-jerk taking place in this thread to create this opposition between quantitative and qualitative analysis and then congratulate your field for being the "only one" to resist it - a rudimentary investigation beyond the very superficial demonstrates that what you appear to be upset with is a prevailing orthodoxy of opinions that makes claims go unchallenged, and not a strict qualitative/quantitative distinction. Then, you make a straw man of quantitative data while freezing both "methods" in time. Look at the outrage that developed in the wake of reader/response theory in English criticism, or the manner in which people HATE deconstruction (which, not incidentally, undermines the claim you make about distinctions between qualitative and quantitative analysis).

What do you see as the salient difference between qualitative and quantitative analysis? Cultures of reception and interpretation are just as rigid and just as empirically/epistemically grounded in humanities as in social sciences; indeed, many of the criticisms of "Canon" advanced from minorities have attempted to strike at the overwhelming blindness in the humanities' beliefs that they represent some sort of open-minded universal. Further, if we perhaps suggest that "quantitative" methods (again, how vague!) are characterized by their attempts to abstract or make representable individual or unique features, what, pray tell, is narratology? What is philology? English uses genres, plot motifs, literary devices, themes, etc. etc. as classificatory systems to abstract complex data in precisely the same way. What is an author? ask Foucault (and Barthes); more importantly, what is post-structuralism, and how has (or should) this inform your understanding of what it means to engage in "qualitative" analysis? Think of Terry Eagleton's famous comment about throwing the masses a few novels so they don't put up barricades.

With that in mind, the general tone of this thread strikes me as perhaps all the more insidious, in its vague references to TS Eliot and the importance of noblesse oblige. A bunch of people moving from "prestigious undergraduate institutions" to "prestigious graduate institution" writing about their professors being on a first name basis and trying to pretend as if these are not only not class privileges but not the inculcation and extension of this very same system of class divide (and wealth creation). Believe whatever you want about Harvard and its support for poor students (the comment about not everyone being cut out for higher education is telling in this regard), but the fact remains that Harvard's endowment is large enough to send millions of kids to university for free, should they so choose. People who talk about the generosity of merit-based institutions often forget that merit is defined by the people who already have the money, and generally reflects their view of what "merit" is and how it will best serve them. In any case, I find that a number of people trying to objectively create a reason for the superiority of the schools they are attending (and schools which have long been dominated by wealthy white men, and only now seem to be opening the doors to wealthy people of other genders or colors) seems to be precisely the attempt to "speak from nowhere", that is, to take one's own subject-position and experience and treat it as a surmountable obstacle to objectively assessing the situation, that legitimizes these practices. Would it not be more significant (like Henry Louis Gates Jr. did when he called Duke "The Plantation", or when Cornel West left Larry Summers) for the people at these places to be actively criticizing them - to test just how far they were committed to being objective? I suspect there is still an extremely strong correlation between the assets of your parents at the time of your birth and your future graduate institution - but that, of course, would be falling back into that "cult-like fundamentalism" of quantitative analysis (which it should be noted was often used to support progressive arguments that the upperclass qualitative analysis resisted; namely, that they did enjoy significant material advantages).

I wish I could be this articulate about my own application process but I feel like your post sums it up to a certain extent. For what it's worth, I will be accepting an offer from a top 5 program as well (I haven't done so yet for a variety of reasons but my official acceptance of the offer will be posted in the mail before the end of the week). I can tell everyone for a fact that there was no part of my application that would be considered stellar except for the caliber of my writing, which is something that I have painstakingly paid attention to as my undergraduate career progressed. My grades were all right; my GRE scores left much to be desired; my CV took up maybe 3/4 of a page and was made up of a couple of small conferences I had been a part of and a couple of fellowships that I kind of haphazardly fell into in the past four years. I don't have a master's degree and my undergraduate institution was an urban public school known much more for its education programs and working class students than it is for churning out Ph.D bound students (though we do end up with a few every year). What really did it for me is that I took a year off after I finished undergrad. I sent out a few applications senior year but I was only able to come up with a rough draft of my honors senior thesis in progress as a writing sample and a vapid outlining of the work I wanted to in graduate school that was summed up by saying, "I intend to focus on the problematics of race" and "I might want to become an Orwellian scholar on the weekends" (what? these are actual quotes). Obviously I was rejected with what I can only imagine was extreme prejudice. This second time around I became firm in my stances and projected myself as a scholar. All I can say is read as much scholarship as you can as you wait to begin this next application cycle. Absorb it and let what you read become a part of who you are as a scholar. Reject that which you find unhelpful and embrace the styles and techniques that you find most engaging. Admissions committees want to be excited about your work and it's the most memorable applications that are most likely to get the nod of approval.

As Sarah Palin says, your not retreating, your reloading.

I echo Pamphilia on this one.

To answer only one aspect of your question:

As soon as an author dies, their production of primary sources ceases – regardless of the century he or she dies in. As a result, any primary sources aside from that author (e.g., epistolary from relatives) will peter out soon afterward. A dead 21st-century author is as "finite" as a dead 13th-century one, though that's a problematic way of putting it for reasons Sparky mentions above. Even if the author is still alive and productive, as soon as you write a book on something he or she has written, your book because temporally "dead"; that is, that piece of your scholarship will not as a material object spontaneously update itself at any point (though you can revise it – a practice popularised by St Augustine, 4th c., incidentally). For all the availability of primary sources might increase the closer an author is to the present day, one will have correspondingly less to examine in terms of that author's reception. We have much more to go on in terms of Chaucer's reception than Fitzgerald's, for instance. (This statement assumes a. fairly popular and/or notorious and/or canonical authors and b. comparable levels of a. between any authors put into a.'s rubric, of course.)

Furthermore, if you compare scholarship on, say, Alexander Pope over the last couple of centuries, even scholars who focus on the same passages will not be saying the same things. I don't mean that they might all hypothetically be disagreeing with each other; but instead that some might be rather difficult to put into dialogue for the fact that ideologies, academic values, etc change with time. Or, short version: because times change. Even if the scholars sound like they'd agree (Milton's Satan IS evil!, they assert – but why do they assert it? Is this a good or bad thing? What does this mean? How do they write and argue it? What sources do they use? What are their political and social contexts, beyond being evidently disparate from each other?)

Compare a 19th-century book review with a 21st-century one, for instance. In the Victorian era, book reviewers were very much about plumbing the work under review for its moral promise. Today, not hardly.

A fair number of folks have theorized that the language we use affects how we think, to say nothing of what we can or cannot think. (Hi, Orwell.) No one has written sentences the way the 21st century writes sentences. And no one outside of the 17th century could un-selfconsciously write a sentence that belongs in the 17th century's style. This seems promising in terms of research originality.

Finally, the centuries of folks who've studied Virgil have not necessarily done so via gender theory, media studies, post/colonialism, etc etc. And I'm sure we're absent a pile of approaches previous scholars enjoyed.

All this to say: 4,000 Victorians aren't recycling the same old crap. Thank goodness.

I echo Pamphilia on this one.

To answer only one aspect of your question:

As soon as an author dies, their production of primary sources ceases – regardless of the century he or she dies in. As a result, any primary sources aside from that author (e.g., epistolary from relatives) will peter out soon afterward. A dead 21st-century author is as "finite" as a dead 13th-century one, though that's a problematic way of putting it for reasons Sparky mentions above. Even if the author is still alive and productive, as soon as you write a book on something he or she has written, your book because temporally "dead"; that is, that piece of your scholarship will not as a material object spontaneously update itself at any point (though you can revise it – a practice popularised by St Augustine, 4th c., incidentally). For all the availability of primary sources might increase the closer an author is to the present day, one will have correspondingly less to examine in terms of that author's reception. We have much more to go on in terms of Chaucer's reception than Fitzgerald's, for instance. (This statement assumes a. fairly popular and/or notorious and/or canonical authors and b. comparable levels of a. between any authors put into a.'s rubric, of course.)

Furthermore, if you compare scholarship on, say, Alexander Pope over the last couple of centuries, even scholars who focus on the same passages will not be saying the same things. I don't mean that they might all hypothetically be disagreeing with each other; but instead that some might be rather difficult to put into dialogue for the fact that ideologies, academic values, etc change with time. Or, short version: because times change. Even if the scholars sound like they'd agree (Milton's Satan IS evil!, they assert – but why do they assert it? Is this a good or bad thing? What does this mean? How do they write and argue it? What sources do they use? What are their political and social contexts, beyond being evidently disparate from each other?)

Compare a 19th-century book review with a 21st-century one, for instance. In the Victorian era, book reviewers were very much about plumbing the work under review for its moral promise. Today, not hardly.

A fair number of folks have theorized that the language we use affects how we think, to say nothing of what we can or cannot think. (Hi, Orwell.) No one has written sentences the way the 21st century writes sentences. And no one outside of the 17th century could un-selfconsciously write a sentence that belongs in the 17th century's style. This seems promising in terms of research originality.

Finally, the centuries of folks who've studied Virgil have not necessarily done so via gender theory, media studies, post/colonialism, etc etc. And I'm sure we're absent a pile of approaches previous scholars enjoyed.

All this to say: 4,000 Victorians aren't recycling the same old crap. Thank goodness.