Here is another example: Raffaele La Capria is a contemporary Italian writer who has written only three novels and a single book of essays, all published by the Italian publisher Bompiani. Let us imagine a thesis with the title “The Fortunes of Raffaele La Capria in Contemporary Italian Criticism.” Since publishers commonly archive all of the critical essays and articles written about their authors, I can hope to find almost all the texts I need in a series of visits to the publisher in Milan. Since the author is living, I can write to him or interview him in person, ask him for other bibliographic suggestions, and probably even obtain photocopies of these relevant texts. Surely a certain critical essay will refer us to other authors to whom La Capria is compared or contrasted, widening the research field a bit, but in a manageable way. This project will pose no problem if I have chosen La Capria out of a more general interest in Italian contemporary literature. If this is not the case, I have probably chosen cynically, coldly, and recklessly.
Here is another example of a six-month thesis: “The Interpretation of World War II in Middle School History Books Published in the Last Five Years.” The student may have some difficulty locating all of the Italian middle school history books in circulation, but in fact there are only a few scholastic presses. Once the student has acquired or photocopied the texts, he will find that the treatments of World War II occupy a few pages in each, and that he can quickly do good comparative work. However, in order to judge a book’s treatment of World War II, the student must compare it to half a dozen reputable histories of the war, and also assess the book’s treatment of history in general. Thus he must widen his scope. Surely, without these forms of critical examination, the student could write the thesis in a week rather than in six months, but it would take the form of a newspaper article instead of a thesis. The article may even be sharp and brilliant, yet it would still be unfit to document the candidate’s research abilities.
Ultimately, if you want to write a six-month thesis but are only willing to commit an hour each day, there is no point in continuing our discussion. Please refer to the advice given in section 1.2: copy a thesis and call it quits.
2.5 Is It Necessary to Know Foreign Languages?
This section does not concern those students writing a thesis on a foreign language or on foreign literature. One would hope that these students know the language on which they write their thesis. Better still, one would hope that a student studying a French author writes his thesis in French, as many universities around the world rightfully require. Also, the observations below are no substitute for learning the language by spending time in the country in question. However, this is an expensive solution, and here I would like to advise students who do not have this option.
Let us pose the problem of an Italian student who writes his thesis in philosophy, sociology, law, political science, history, or natural sciences. Even if the thesis involves Italian history, Dante, or the Renaissance, the student will inevitably have to read a book in a foreign language, since illustrious scholars of Dante and the Renaissance have written in English, German, and other languages foreign to our Italian student. In these cases, the student generally uses the thesis as an excuse to start reading in a new language. If the student is motivated by the topic and up to the challenge, he will begin to gain understanding. Often this is how the student first learns a foreign language.
Although he will not learn to speak the new language, he will learn to read it, which is better than nothing. If there is only one book in German on a specific topic, and if the student does not know German, he can ask someone to read him the most important chapters. He will have the decency not to rely on that particular book too much, but at least he will be able to legitimately include it in his bibliography.
But these are all secondary issues. The main tenet is this: we should not choose a topic that involves foreign language skills that we do not currently possess, or that we are not willing to acquire. For now, let us examine some essential requirements:
1. We cannot write a thesis on a foreign author if we do not read his texts in the original language. This seems self-evident if the author is a poet, but many students do not see this as a prerequisite for a thesis on Kant, Freud, or Marx. However, it is required for three reasons. First, not all of the author’s works may be available in translation, and sometimes neglecting even a minor work can lead to a misrepresentation of the author’s intellectual background, or his work in general. Second, most of the secondary sources on a given author are usually in the author’s original language. Even if the author is available in translation, his critics may not be. Finally, the translation does not always do justice to an author’s thought, and writing a thesis involves the act of restoring the author’s original thought from the distortions of translations, and from vulgarizations of various kinds. Writing a thesis requires going beyond the easy formulas of school textbooks, such as “Foscolo is a classicist while Leopardi is a romantic,” or “Plato is an idealist and Aristotle is a realist,” or “Pascal favors the heart and Descartes favors reason.”
2. We cannot write a thesis on a topic on which the most important secondary sources are in a language we do not know. For example, since some of the past decade’s most groundbreaking reassessments of Nietzsche’s German texts have been written in French, a student whose only foreign language was German could not write a thesis on Nietzsche. The same applies to Freud; it would be difficult to reinterpret the Viennese master without considering the American Freudian “revisionists” or the French structuralists.
3. We cannot write a thesis on an author or a topic by reading only the sources written in familiar languages. How can we know beforehand that the most influential secondary source on our author or topic is written in a language in which we are fluent? Surely questions like this can lead to paralysis, so here we should use common sense: rules of academic rigor allow a Western student to acknowledge a secondary source written in
Japanese, and to admit that he has not read it. This “license to ignore” usually extends to non-Western languages and Slavic languages, so that a student can complete a rigorous study on Marx and still admit his ignorance of Russian sources. But in these cases, the rigorous scholar will demonstrate that he has explored these sources through reviews or abstracts. For example, Soviet, Bulgarian, Czechoslovakian, and Israeli academic journals usually provide abstracts of their articles in English or French. Therefore, if the student works on a French author, he may manage with no knowledge of Russian, but he must read at least English. In any case, before the student chooses a topic, he must have the good sense to consult the existing bibliography in order to avoid considerable linguistic difficulties. In some cases, this is easy to determine: it is unthinkable to write a thesis in Greek philology without knowing German, the language in which there is a flood of important studies on the subject.
Additionally, the thesis will inevitably introduce the student to a smattering of general terminology in all Western languages. For example, even if the student does not read Russian, he must at least be able to recognize the Cyrillic alphabet enough to determine whether a quoted book speaks of art or science. It takes an evening to gain this familiarity, and after comparing a few titles the student will know that iskusstvo means “art” and nauka means “science.” Do not let this terrorize you. You should consider your thesis a unique chance to learn skills that will serve you for a lifetime.
Let us form a final, conciliatory hypothesis. Suppose an Italian student is interested in the problem of visual perception pertaining to the topic of art. This student does not know any foreign languages, nor does he have the time to learn them. (Or the student may have some kind of psychological block; there are people who learn Swedish in a week, and others who can barely speak French after ten years of practice.) In addition to these limitations, let us suppose that the student must write a six-month thesis for economic reasons. Although the student must graduate quickly and find employment, he is sincerely interested in his topic, and he eventually plans to study it more deeply when time permits. (We must think of this kind of student as well.)
In this case, the student may narrow his topic to “The Problems of Visual Perception in Relation to Figurative Arts in Particular Contemporary Authors.” First, he must paint a picture of the psychological question, and on this topic there is a
