Dear professors,
 
From my point of view as a student in the final stage of my master thesis
(German Magisterarbeit) I have to tell you, that after I learned  _how_ to
read, how to ask questions to a text, I've always liked primary texts
better. The important thing is to teach how to read which I think is being
done more at American universities than in most of Germany?!? It is always
so much to be discovered in primary texts which other writers of secondary
literature haven't found or didn't think of importance. It's never wrong to
read secondary texts too, but never without the primary source. There is
always a fashion or a certain point of view under which a secondary text is
written, but I'd rather have my own point.
 
Antje Pfannkuchen
 
 
 
>Robert,
>I could not agree with you more about the primacy of the texts and the
>sources! But we might not hold the majority view in this regard. On a
>medieval list to which I subscribe, a professor emeritus, referring to a
>compendious work of literary history, opined that you could find out
>"everything you need to know" about any poem written during the period from
>that reference work.  Yikes.
>Tim Romano
>
>
>
>Robert Kibler wrote:
>[...]
> I see his point, but at the same time, think that working over specific
>texts not only allows students to acquire a sense of the work, its times,
>but that doing so also develops critical skills that will be important to
>them wherever they go. Second hand information is just not that conducive to
>the development of critical thought. [...]