You may observe that, more than once in this book, I have expressed a paradox and then warned that it was a paradox. For example, in section 2.6.1, I proposed the existence of the mythical centaur for the purpose of explaining the concept of scientific research. But I warned you of this paradox not because I thought you would have believed this proposition. On the contrary, I warned you because I was afraid that you would have doubted too much, and hence dismissed the paradox. Therefore I insisted that, despite its paradoxical form, my statement contained an important truth: that research must clearly define its object so that others can identify it, even if this object is mythical. And I made this absolutely clear because this is a didactic book in which I care more that everyone understands what I want to say than about a beautiful literary style. Had I been writing an essay, I would have pronounced the paradox without denouncing it later.
Always define a term when you introduce it for the first time. If you do not know the definition of a term, avoid using it. If it is one of the principal terms of your thesis and you are not able to define it, call it quits. You have chosen the wrong thesis (or, if you were planning to pursue further research, the wrong career).
Do not explain the location of Rome without then explaining the location of Timbuktu. It gives me chills to read sentences like, “Guzzo defined the Jewish-Dutch pantheist philosopher Spinoza …” Stop! Either you are writing a thesis on Spinoza, and in this case your reader already knows who Spinoza is, and also you will already have informed the reader that Augusto Guzzo wrote a book on Spinoza; or you are quoting this statement tangentially in a thesis on nuclear physics, and in this case you should presume that the reader is aware of Spinoza but not of Guzzo; or you are writing a thesis on post-Gentilian philosophy in Italy,3 and you can expect your reader to know both Guzzo and Spinoza. Even in a thesis on history, do not write “T. S. Eliot, an English poet …” Take it for granted that T. S. Eliot is universally known (and also consider that he was born in the United States). At most, if you wish to emphasize that it was precisely an English poet who said something particular, you will write, “It was an English poet, Eliot, who said that …” But if you write a thesis on Eliot, have the humility to provide all the information about him in the text. If not in the text, at least provide it in a note near the beginning, and be honest and precise enough to condense all of his necessary biographical information into ten lines. The reader, as much as he may know the subject, will not necessarily have memorized Eliot’s birthday. Take this into consideration when you write a work on a minor author of past centuries. Do not presume that everyone knows of him. One never knows. Immediately introduce him, his cultural context, and so on. But even if the author was Molière, how much will it cost you to insert a note with a couple of dates?
I or we?4 Should the student introduce his opinions in the first person? Should he state, “I think that … ”? Some believe that this is more honest than using the majestic plural. I disagree. A writer says “we” because he presumes that his readers can share what he is saying. Writing is a social act. I write so that you as the reader accept what I propose to you. At the most, I think, the student can try to avoid personal pronouns by adopting more impersonal expressions such as, “therefore one should conclude that,” “it then seems granted that,” “one should say at this point,” “one should presume,” “therefore one infers that,” “in examining this text one sees that,” etc. It is not necessary to say, “the article that we previously quoted,” when it suffices to say, “the article previously quoted.” But I think the student can write, “the article previously quoted shows us that,” because these types of expressions do not imply any personalization of the academic discourse.
5.3 Quotations
5.3.1 When and How to Quote: 10 Rules
Generally speaking, you will quote many texts by other authors in your thesis: the textual object of your work, or the primary source or sources; and the critical literature on your topic, or the secondary sources. Therefore, practically speaking, there are two kinds of quotes: (a) quotes from a text that you will interpret; (b) quotes from a text that you will use to support your interpretation. It is difficult to say abstractly whether you should quote abundantly or sparingly. It depends on the type of thesis you are writing. A critical analysis of a writer obviously requires that large passages of his works be quoted and analyzed. In other cases, a quote can be a manifestation of laziness, for example if the candidate is unwilling or unable to summarize a collection of data and prefers to let someone else do it for him. Hence, we provide the following ten rules:
Rule 1: Quote the object of your interpretive analysis with reasonable abundance.
Rule 2: Quote the critical literature only when its authority corroborates or confirms your statements.
These two rules imply some obvious corollaries. First, if the passage you wish to analyze exceeds half a page, it means something is wrong. Either your analysis is too general and you will not be able to comment on the text point by point; or you are discussing an entire text rather than a passage, and presenting a global criticism rather than an analysis. In these cases, if the text is important but too long, present it in full in an appendix, and quote only short passages over the course of your chapters. Second, when quoting or citing critical literature, be sure that it says something new, or that it confirms authoritatively what you have said. The following illustrates a useless quote and a useless citation:
Mass communication constitutes, as McLuhan says, “one of the central phenomena of our time.” We should not forget that, in our country alone, two out of three individuals spend a third of their day in front of the TV, according to Savoy.
What is wrong or naïve in this example? First, that mass communication is a central phenomenon of our time is a banality that anyone could have said. I do not exclude the possibility that McLuhan himself may have said it (I did not check—I invented this quote), but it is not necessary to refer to an authority to prove something so obvious. Second, it is possible that the data on the TV audience is accurate, but Savoy does not constitute an authority. (In fact, it is a name I also invented.) The author of the thesis should have cited the data of the Italian Central Institute of Statistics, a sociological research project signed by renowned scholars who are beyond suspicion, or the results of his own inquiry backed up by an appendix of tables that present his data, rather than citing just any old Savoy.
Rule 3: If you don’t want readers to presume that you share the opinion of the quoted author, you must include your own critical remarks before or after the passage.
Rule 4: Make sure that the author and the source (print or manuscript) of your quote are clearly identifiable. You can do this by including one of the following: (a) a superscript number and a corresponding note (see section 5.4.2), especially when you mention the author for the first time; (b) the author’s name and the work’s publication date, in parentheses after the quote (see section 5.4.3); (c) the page number in parentheses, but only when the entire chapter (or the entire thesis) centers on the same work by the same author. Table 5.1 illustrates how you could structure a page of a thesis with the title “Epiphany in James Joyce’s Portrait.” In this case, once you have clarified to which edition you refer, cite your primary source with the page number in parentheses in the text, and cite the critical literature in the note.5
Table 5.1
Example of the Continuous Analysis of a Single Text
The text of Portrait is rich with these moments of ecstasy that Joyce had already defined in Stephen Hero as epiphanic:
Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than other. (151)
It is immediately evident that the “submarine” vision changes to the vision of a flame, in which red tones and sensations of brightness prevail. Now, we know that metaphors of fire frequently recur in Portrait, and that the word “fire” appears at least 59 times and variations of the word “flame” appear 35 times. Here we can see the association between fire and the epiphanic experience, and this illuminates the relations between Portrait and Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Flame. Let us examine this passage from Portrait:
Or was it
