The Future of Literary Scholarship
O NE might summarily describe literary scholarship in the nineteenth century as a continuous struggle between the philologists and the historians. In the one corner, we had the philologists. They were influenced by the new discoveries in chemistry and geology. They tried to break literature also into its elements-words. Each word they subjected to analysis, studying its roots and variations. As the chemists postulated undiscovered elements in their table and the astronomers undiscovered planets, they could formulate a Sanskrit word that they had not yet found. In their studies the beauties of literature, the rhythms of poetry, the structure of drama were lost in the pursuit of each separate word. Such was philology, scholarship made in Germany, the science of language. In the other corner were the historians. They sought not for elements but for links in the great chain of being. Darwin was their hero; they applied evolution not merely to horses and men but to the drama, the ode, the novel. Under their scrutiny the once Dark Ages became the Middle Ages. Sources, parallels, influences were their concern. The masterpieces were not broken up into separate words by them, but were hidden under webs of cross reference. After their analyses, the finest literary tapestry looked like a patchwork quilt. Through the late nineteenth century the warfare between the schools continued. Literary history was the easier task, but each university needed also its philologist, born or trained in Germany, as a sign of real scholarship. But the twentieth century saw a change in this warfare one side undermined, the other victorious. The study of the history and origin of words may be dying slowly-but it is dying surely. Ancient languages, and some modern ones, have gone out of the high schools and almost out of the colleges. In i900 a student might enter college with four years of Latin, two of Greek, two of German, and two of French. In I94i he would be unlikely to enter the graduate school with that equipment. The linguistic teacher may discover in each graduate class a student with the gift of tongues but never a whole class. The study of comparative philology may still have a few disciples, in phonetic laboratories or dialectic excursions, but most of its followers have turned to other fields. On the other hand, the historians have flourished. Sources, parallels,