The second thesis was on “The Scholastic Policy of the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) from the Formation of the Center-Left (1963) to the Student Protests (1968).” Here too, the student specified the topic with precision and, I would say, prudence, because conducting research on the period after 1968 would have been difficult due to the sheer quantity of sources. The student judiciously chose to focus on the period before 1968, limiting his sources to the official press of the Communist Party, the parliamentary acts, the party’s archives, and the general press. I have to imagine that, no matter how precisely the student researched the general press, some information must have slipped through the cracks due to the amount of coverage involved. Nevertheless, the general press was unquestionably a valid secondary source of opinions and criticisms.
As for the other sources, the official declarations were sufficient to define the Communist Party’s scholastic policy. Had the thesis dealt with the scholastic policy of the Christian Democracy, a party in the government coalition, this would have been a very different story, and the research would surely have assumed dramatic proportions. On one hand there would have been the official statements, on the other the actual governmental acts that may have contradicted these statements. Take also into account that, if the period had extended beyond 1968, the student would have had to include, among the sources of unofficial opinions, all the publications of the extraparliamentary movements that began to proliferate after that period. Once again, the research would have been far more difficult. Finally, I imagine that the candidate had the opportunity to work in Rome, or he was able to have the required material photocopied and sent to him.
The third thesis dealt with medieval history, and was on a seemingly difficult topic. It examined the vicissitudes of the San Zeno Abbey’s estate in Verona during the High Middle Ages. The heart of the work consisted of a transcription, previously never attempted, of certain folios from the San Zeno Abbey’s registry in the thirteenth century. Naturally, the project required some knowledge of paleography, but once the candidate acquired this technique, he only needed to diligently execute the transcription and comment on the results. Nevertheless, the thesis included a bibliography of 30 titles, a sign that the student had historically contextualized the specific problem on the basis of previous literature. I assume that the candidate was from Verona and had chosen a project that did not involve much travel.
The fourth thesis was titled “Contemporary Drama Performances in Trentino.” The candidate, who lived in that region of Italy, knew that there had been a limited number of performances, and he reconstructed them by consulting newspapers, city archives, and statistical surveys on the audience’s frequency. The fifth thesis, “Aspects of Cultural Policy in the City of Budrio with Particular Reference to the City Library’s Activity,” was similar. These are two examples of projects whose sources are easily available, but that are nevertheless useful because they require a compilation of statistical-sociological documentation that will serve future researchers.
A sixth thesis required more time and effort than the others. It illustrates how a student can treat with scientific rigor a topic that at first seems appropriate only for an honest literature survey. The title was “The Question of the Actor in Adolphe Appia’s Oeuvre.” Appia is a well-known Swiss author and the subject of abundant historical and theoretical theater studies that, it would seem, have exhausted all there is to say about him. But the candidate painstakingly researched the Swiss archives, along with countless libraries, and explored each and every place where Appia had worked. The student was able to compile an exhaustive bibliography of works on the author, along with the author’s own writings, including minor articles that had been forgotten shortly after their original publication. This gave the thesis a breadth and precision that, according to the advisor, qualified it as a definitive contribution. The student thus went beyond the literature survey by making these obscure sources accessible.
3.1.2 Direct and Indirect Sources
Regarding books, a direct source is an original edition or a critical edition of the work in question.
A translation is not a direct source: it is instead a prosthetic like dentures or a pair of glasses. It is a means by which I gain limited access to something that lies outside my range.
An anthology is not a direct source: it is a stew of sources, useful only for a first approach to the topic. If I write a thesis on a particular author, my goal is to see in him what others have not, and an anthology only provides someone else’s view.
The critical works of other authors, no matter how rich with quotations, are not direct sources: at best, they are indirect sources.
Indirect sources can take many forms. If the subject of my thesis is the Italian communist politician Palmiro Togliatti, the parliamentary speeches published by the newspaper Unità constitute an indirect source, because there is no assurance that the newspaper has not made edits or mistakes. Instead, the parliamentary acts themselves constitute a direct source. If I could locate an actual text written by Togliatti himself, I would have the ultimate direct source. If I want to study the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, the only direct source is the original document. However, a good photocopy can also be considered a direct source.
I can also use as a direct source the critical edition by a historiographer of undisputed rigor, if I define “undisputed” to mean that his edition has never been challenged by other critical works. Clearly the concepts of “direct” and “indirect” sources depend on my perspective and the approach that I take for my thesis. If I wish to discuss the political meaning of the Declaration of Independence in my thesis, a good critical edition will be more than adequate. If I want to write a thesis on “The Narrative Structures in The Betrothed,” any edition of Alessandro Manzoni’s novel will suffice. Instead, my thesis might be called “Manzoni’s Linguistic Transformation from Milan to Florence.” It would explore the novel’s linguistic change from the blend of Lombard vernacular and traditional literary language of the 1827 edition to the contemporary Florentine of the 1840 edition. In this case, my thesis would require a good critical edition of each version of the novel.
Let us then say that my sources should always be direct, within the limits set by the object of my research. The only absolute rule is that I should not quote my author through another quote. In theory, a rigorous scientific work should never quote from any quote, even if the material that I wish to quote is from someone other than the object of my thesis. Nevertheless, there are reasonable exceptions, especially for a thesis. For example, if you choose “The Question of the Transcendental Nature of Beauty in Thomas
Aquinas’s Summa theologiae,” your primary source will be Thomas Aquinas’s Summa. Let us say that Marietti’s currently available edition is sufficient, unless you suspect that it betrays the original, in which case you must return to other editions. (In this case your thesis will have a philological character, instead of an aesthetic/philosophical character.) You will soon discover that Aquinas also addresses the transcendental nature of beauty in his Commentary to Pseudo-Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus (The Divine Names), and you must address this work as well, despite your thesis’s restrictive title.
Finally you will discover that Aquinas’s work on this theme drew from an entire religious tradition, and that researching all of the original sources would take a scholar his entire career. You will also discover that such a work already exists, and that its author is Dom Henry Pouillon who, in this vast work of his, quotes large passages from all the authors who commented on Pseudo-Dionysius and illuminates the relationships, origins, and contradictions of these commentaries. Within the scope of your thesis, you can certainly use the material Pouillon gathered each time you refer to Alexander of Hales or Hilduin. If you come to realize that Alexander of Hales’ text becomes essential for the development of your argument, then you can consult the Quaracchi edition of the direct text, but if you only need to refer to a short quote, it will suffice to declare that you found the source through Pouillon. Nobody will fault you because Pouillon is a rigorous scholar, and because the text you quoted indirectly through him was not central to your thesis.
What you should never do is quote from an indirect source pretending that you have read the original. This is not just a matter of professional ethics. Imagine if someone asked how you were able to read a certain manuscript directly, when it
