Vocation - Spirit of Scholarship and Scholar's Life | Richard Altick

Research Methodology
The Art of Literary
Research
M.Phil.
English Studies
5/5/2022 Dilip Barad 1

Objectives of teaching RM:
• To prepare students for research and publication.
• To orient towards the importance of research in the field of
humanities.
• To inspire for writing research papers for seminars and
workshop, systematically.
• To make aware about the technicalities in doing research and
writing articles/dissertations.

The philosophy behind Literary Research
• The Art of Literary Research – Richard Altick and John Fenstermaker
– The purposes, methods, and pleasures of research in Literatures.
– Scholar’s vocation
– The spirit of Scholarship
– The Scholar’s Life

The praxis
• Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is
enacted, practiced, embodied, or realized.
• "Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying,
exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas.
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Paper – Seventh
Edition.

What Is MLA Style?
• All fields of research agree on the need to document scholarly borrowings, but
documentation conventions vary because of the different needs of scholarly
disciplines. MLA style for documentation is widely used in the humanities,
especially in writing on language and literature. Generally simpler and more
concise than other styles, MLA style features brief parenthetical citations in the
text keyed to an alphabetical list of works cited that appears at the end of the
work.
• MLA style has been widely adopted by schools, academic departments, and
instructors for over half a century. The association's guidelines are also used by
over 1,100 scholarly and literary journals, newsletters, and magazines and by
many university and commercial presses. The MLA's guidelines are followed
throughout North America and in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Taiwan, and other
countries around the world.
• http://www.mla.org/style

• Scope of Research – philosophical argument
• The Literature Review – process of writing research
article/dissertation
• Citation – acknowledge the source, avoid plagiarism

Some quotes from ALR
• Genuine scholarship is one of the highest successes which our
race can achieve. – E. M. Forster Aspects of the Novel (New
York, 1927) 22.
• Life is continuous process of finding the holes and plugging
them and making as few new ones as possible. – Sir William
Haley…

Vocation of Research Scholar
• What is the vocation of a scholar?
• Difference between Critic, Researcher and Scholar?
• What are the chief qualities of mind and temperament that go
to make up a successful and happy scholar?
• Difference between Researcher and Scholar.
– Critic and scholar – George Whalley: ‘No true scholar can lack critical
acumen; and the scholar’s eye is rather like the poet’s… pg 2

• Literature is the product of human being’s imagination and
intellect – study of author – Sainte-Beuve – like the tree, like
the fruit… (pg 3)
• No writer writes in vacuum.
• A book has both antecedents and a history of its own. (pg 3,4)
– T.S. Eliot.
• LR – devoted to the enlightenment of criticism.

• Literary history – literature is an eloquent artistic document –
autobiography of the race’s soul. (pg. 5)
• The reconstruction and interpretation of our literary past has
its own dignity. (pg. 5)
• LR – unmeasurable and intensely real personal satisfaction.

• Pg. 12 – second last para – ‘… given a fair degree of
imagination, originality of approach, solidity of learning, and
the wish and the will to see works of literary art and their
creators from new perspectives, everyone called to the
profession will discover amply rewarding projects’.
• Publish or perish (pg. 13)

• What are the chief qualities of mind and temperament that go
to make up a successful and happy scholar?
• Law and Journalism (pg 15)
• Principles of evidence and resourcefulness.
• Organizational skill – ability to put facts together in a pattern.

• Ideal researcher must ‘love’ literature for its own sake – as an art.
• Insatiable readers – the habit acquired earlier the better. (pg. 15)
• Intellectual sympathy – Helen Vandler… (Pg. 16)
• A vivid sense of history – (pg. 16).
• Scientific approach and LR (pg. 17)
• Substance and spirit of such extra literary training gives advantage.

• No margin of error is allowed. (pg 18)
• Logan Pearsall Smith – ‘The test of vocation is the love of the
drudgery it involves…’
• With all these, ‘a creative imagination’… pg. 18.

• Researcher and scholar: (pg20)
• “Learning without wisdom is a load of books on an
ass’s back.”
• One can be a researcher, full of knowledge, without
also being a scholar.
• Researcher is the means, scholarship the end.
• Research is an occupation, scholarship is a habit of
mind and a way of life.
• Scholars are more than researchers, for while they
may be gifted in the discovery and assessment of
facts, they are, besides, persons of broad and
luminous learning.

We conclude with…
• John Livingston Lowes: “….interpretations… “ Pg. 21.

The Scholar’s Life
• Pg. 247: Literary scholars never cease being scholar.
• Responsibilities remote from pursuit of knowledge.
• … scholars cannot suppress that portion of their consciousness
that insists on asking questions about literary matters and
seeking answers.
• 24X7 bookish excitement!!!

• Professionalized literary scholarship - down the century it has
become a highly organized and sophisticated intellectual
discipline.
• The ‘golden age’ when research dominated English studies –
1920s to 1960s – ‘New Criticism’ – Cleanth Brooks, J.C.
Ransom, Allen Tate > Northrope Frye > Structuralism.

• Some historians and critics – early formative decades has not
lost breath of learning and intellectual rigor.
• Wayne Booth – regret formal aspect of literary texts – ‘isolated
from the influences of ethics, politics, history, logic, dialectic,
and even grammar.’

• Such opposing views – broadened the traditional canon to
embrace numerous kinds of writing, gender, ethnic oriented
works.
• The scope of English studies now also includes writing theory
and pedagogy.
• The meanings of ‘meaning’ have been drastically redefined.
• The immortals of the profession would scarcely recognize the
profession of English studies they helped found and develop.

• The study of literature remains at base an intensely private
pursuit.
• No one ever entered the profession burning with a single-
minded ambition to read papers in seminars – or – printing
papers in learned journals.
• It has sharper satisfaction – enabled them to do what they
wanted to.

• Numerous Perquisite in research:
• Lifelong company of books and good human companionship.
(pg 250)
• Pleasure of travel, frequent encounter with delightful and
helpful people.
• In scholarship there is no prejudice born of national origin,
creed, colour or social class – we live in truest democracy of all,
the democracy of the intellect. (pg 250)

• Code of manners and ethics: (pg 251)
– the proposition at heart is – “we are working together for the benefit
of society, not for private aggrandizement.”
– Scientists and inventors have their patents, but in humane learning
all knowledge is in the public domain.
– Property rights should be respected.
– More energetic scholar should be allowed to mine it deeper – spirit
of scholarship.

• Two principles: (pg 252)
– Let others know what you are working on
– Keep up with what others are doing – not only in your field but in
others as well.

• Difference of opinion – it will always be, it should be.
• Scholarly competence not distributed evenly – so lapses in
judgment & imperfections may call for comment.
• Otherwise literary study would stagnate.
• But debate and correction should be conducted with dignity
and courtesy. (pg. 253)

• Humanities in perennial crisis – (pg253-255)
– Achievements have unreal value – futile – add nothing to the sum of
human wisdom or happiness.
– Our fault –
– What can be done? (last para – 254-55)

Source
• Altick, Richard, John Fenstermaker. The Art of Literary
Research. W. W. Norton. N.Y. Fourth Edition. 1993.

Vocation - Spirit of Scholarship and Scholar's Life | Richard Altick

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