Norman Ravitch *62

6 Years Ago

A Ph.D. in English Lit?

Mr. Krumholtz ("Crooked Wood") got his Princeton Ph.D. 53 years after me. When I knew Ph.D. graduate students in English, the poor blokes spent all their time studying Anglo-Saxon for a required exam. We took language exams in German and French, and studied other languages as needed in research. No one studying Anglo-Saxon to my knowledge went into Anglo-Saxon studies; I think the requirement was a way of weeding out not the unfit, but the unwilling. And they still had to learn German and French.

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