Subject
VN & professionalism (fwd)
Date
Body
Hello! Thanks to those of you who weighed in on VN's (possible) attitudes
toward scholarship. I'd thought I'd belabor the point a bit and try to be
more specific -- asking better questions is half the struggle around here.
When I asked about "professionalism," I didn't really mean literary
criticism as such. I know well enough what Nabokov thought about any
approach that didn't include maps. But do we think that _he thought_ that
scholarship was a good way to measure the intellectual rigor of members of
the teaching profession? I believe that his own work on Gogol, Pushkin, the
_Slovo_, etc. were more labors of love than attempts to demonstrate academic
competence or to secure tenure at a particular institution (which he wanted
to do very much, of course -- I'm not arguing that he was indifferent to
tenure, just that his method of approach did not seem to be one based on
number of published works -- although he does have that quote about the "bad
scholar . . . heaviest dictionary" . . . where do I find that again? the
NWL?). At any rate, I am still left wondering whether or not he believed
the university teaching profession should have some standard of academic
discipline, or should anyone who could infect students with the love of
great works be teaching? Thanks in advance.
From the It's-a-Small-World-(of Names)-Dept.: The Chicago Blackhawks of the
NHL just signed their #1 draft pick from 1995 -- Dmitri Nabokov.
Dustin C. Pascoe
University of Kentucky
"Ah, you bright and risen angels, you are all in your graves! I, your
author, am lonely . . ."
toward scholarship. I'd thought I'd belabor the point a bit and try to be
more specific -- asking better questions is half the struggle around here.
When I asked about "professionalism," I didn't really mean literary
criticism as such. I know well enough what Nabokov thought about any
approach that didn't include maps. But do we think that _he thought_ that
scholarship was a good way to measure the intellectual rigor of members of
the teaching profession? I believe that his own work on Gogol, Pushkin, the
_Slovo_, etc. were more labors of love than attempts to demonstrate academic
competence or to secure tenure at a particular institution (which he wanted
to do very much, of course -- I'm not arguing that he was indifferent to
tenure, just that his method of approach did not seem to be one based on
number of published works -- although he does have that quote about the "bad
scholar . . . heaviest dictionary" . . . where do I find that again? the
NWL?). At any rate, I am still left wondering whether or not he believed
the university teaching profession should have some standard of academic
discipline, or should anyone who could infect students with the love of
great works be teaching? Thanks in advance.
From the It's-a-Small-World-(of Names)-Dept.: The Chicago Blackhawks of the
NHL just signed their #1 draft pick from 1995 -- Dmitri Nabokov.
Dustin C. Pascoe
University of Kentucky
"Ah, you bright and risen angels, you are all in your graves! I, your
author, am lonely . . ."