How to Write a Thesis

NOTES Translators’ Foreword 1.  Umberto Eco, Dire quasi la stessa cosa: Esperienze di traduzione (Milan: Bompiani, 2003), 364. Our translation. [Trans.] 2.  All currency conversions are based on the actual June 15, 1977, exchange rate of Italian lire to US dollars. “Convertitore storico delle valute,” Banca d’Italia, http://cambi.bancaditalia.it/cambi/cambi.do ?lingua=it&to=convertitore (accessed May 2013). [Trans.] Introduction to the Original 1977 Edition 1.  One could ask why I do not use the female pronoun “she” when referring to a student, candidate, professor, or advisor. It is because I drew on personal memories and experiences, and I identify better with the male counterpart. Chapter 1 1.  At the time of this book’s publication, Italians who held laurea degrees enjoyed preferential access to public-sector jobs and auto- matic career advancement, even if their degree was in a field unre- lated to their employment. [Trans.] 2.  We could add a fifth rule: “The professor should be the appropri- ate fit for the topic.” In fact, there are candidates who wish to work with the professor of Subject A, because they feel an affinity with him or because they are simply lazy, despite the fact that their thesis would be better served by the professor of Subject B. Often the pro- fessor accepts (out of predilection, vanity, or carelessness) and then is unable to effectively direct the thesis.

226 Notes Chapter 2 1.  C. W. Cooper and E. J. Robins, The Term Paper: A Manual and Model, 4th ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 3. 2.  In 1968, Italian university students rebelled against what they perceived as an antiquated curriculum, an elitist system that favored privileged applicants, and an unjust distribution of power between students and faculty. [Trans.] 3.  Although isolated “free radio” stations emerged in Italy in the late 1960s, they became a nationwide phenomenon between 1975 and 1979. These private, local radio stations were illegal until 1976 because they broke the frequency monopoly of RAI, Italy’s national broadcasting company. The Constitutional Court sentence no. 202 (July 28, 1976) restricted the monopoly of RAI to national program- ming, and opened local programming to the private sector. However, the Italian parliament failed to provide specific legislation to regu- late the activity of the local stations, which is why Eco designates them as “semilegal” in 1977. See Stefano Dark, Libere! L’epopea delle radio italiane degli anni ’70 (Viterbo: Stampa alternativa/Nuovi Equi- libri, 2009), 87–88. [Trans.] 4.  ARCI, or Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana (Italian Recreational and Cultural Association), was officially constituted in Florence on May 26, 1957, by a national convention of cultural, recre- ational, and athletic clubs fostering democratic and antifascist ideals. “L’Associazione. Storia,” Arci Bologna, http://www.arcibologna .it/lassociazione/storia (accessed April 22, 2013). [Trans.] 5.  Lotta Continua (“The Fight Continues” or “Continuous Fight”) was a far-left extraparliamentary movement active in Italy from 1969 to 1976. [Trans.] Chapter 3 1.  “Maritain’s interpretation of the expression visa placent is extremely popular with neo-Thomists, many of whom take his defi- nition of beauty as id quod visum placet—namely, the definition ‘Beauty is that which pleases when it is seen’—to be a correct quota- tion from Aquinas. In fact what Aquinas actually wrote was ‘Pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent’—that is, ‘things are called beautiful which please when they are seen.’ Aquinas’s words refer to what we

Notes 227 might call a sociological fact, whereas Maritain’s version amounts to a metaphysical definition.” Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 240n22. [Trans.] 2.  So that Eco’s documentation guidelines will be useful to English-speaking students, we have adapted his preferred reference formats (examples numbers 1 and 5) to those recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). We have similarly adapted Eco’s references throughout this book. [Trans.] 3.  William Giles Campbell and Stephen Vaughan Ballou, Form and Style, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 69. [Trans.] 4.  Although searching under the terms “seventeenth century,” “baroque,” and “aesthetics” seems fairly obvious, “poetics” is a slightly more subtle choice. My justification is that a student cannot have formulated this subject from scratch, but in fact a professor, a friend, or a preliminary reading must have prompted him. So he may well have heard the term “baroque poetics” or have encountered mentions of poetics (that is, literary theories) in general. So let us assume that the student has this preliminary knowledge. 5.  Our translation. [Trans.] Chapter 4 1.  Unlike Italian universities, universities in other countries (includ- ing the United States) generally do not require oral exams. Instead, they require papers, that is, an essay or a “mini thesis” of 10 to 20 pages for each course. This is a useful system that some Italian pro- fessors have also adopted. (Italian regulations do not exclude this system; and the oral exam, primarily focusing on factual knowledge, is only one of the methods available to the professor to assess the student’s abilities.) 2.  The partisan war in Monferrato (Piedmont, Italy) was part of the larger partisan liberation movement known as the Resistenza (Resis- tance) that took place during the latter years of World War II (Sep- tember 1943–May 1945) in opposition to both the Nazi forces occupying Italy and the fascist forces of the Italian Social Republic. While allied against the same enemies, partisans in the garibaldine brigades were generally associated with the Italian Communist Party

228 Notes (PCI), while those in the badogliane formations were politically mod- erate and loyal to King Vittorio Emanuele III and Marshal Pietro Badoglio. The Franchi and Mauri were two important badogliane formations, respectively headed by Edgardo Sogno del Vallino and Enrico Martini, aka Mauri. See Giorgio Bocca, Storia dell’Italia parti- giana (Bari: Laterza, 1970). [Trans.] 3.  Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Axel, trans. Marilyn Gaddis Rose (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1970), 170. [Trans.] 4.  The index card includes our translation from Théophile Gautier, “Préface,” in Poésies completes, vol. 1, Premières poésies, 1830–1832, Albertus, 1832, Poésies diverses, 1833–1838, ed. Maurice Dreyfous (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1884), 4, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ bpt6k62191411/f22.image. [Trans.] Chapter 5 1.  Purg. XXIV. 53–54. The English translation is from Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, trans. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander, with an introduction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 531. [Trans.] 2.  First published anonymously as Norme per la redazione di un testo radiofonico (Turin: Edizioni Radio italiana, 1953), then enlarged in Carlo Emilio Gadda, Norme per la redazione di un testo radiofonico (Turin: ERI—Edizioni Rai Radiotelevisione italiana, 1973). [Trans.] 3.  Eco is referring to the Italian idealist philosopher Giovanni Gen- tile (1875–1944). [Trans.] 4.  Despite Eco’s compelling argument regarding this topic, his advice in this paragraph does not necessarily reflect current English usage. [Trans.] 5.  In our translation in table 5.1 we quoted from James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism, ed. John Paul Riquelme, text ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Walter Hettche (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), and from Gabriele D’Annunzio, The Flame, trans. Susan Bassnett (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1991), 10. [Trans.] 6.  There are various ways to format block quotations on the printed page. They can be set in a smaller font size (an option that the type- writer does not have), or indented, or single-spaced if the rest of the

Notes 229 text is double-spaced. When typing your thesis, you should follow the formatting guidelines set by your institution. 7.  This is not always the case in current English usage. Different manuals recommend different practices in this situation. [Trans.] 8.  “The country girl is coming from the fields.” Giacomo Leopardi, “The Village Saturday,” in The Canti, with a Selection of His Prose, trans. J. G. Nichols (Manchester: Carcanet, 1994), 106. [Trans.] 9.  “The cypresses that to Bolgheri go tall and straight from San Guido in double lines.” Giosue Carducci, “The Cypresses of San Guido,” in The New Lyrics of Giosue Carducci, trans. William Fletcher Smith (Colorado Springs, CO: privately printed, 1942), 66. [Trans.] 10.  Maude Nugent, “Sweet Rosie O’Grady, 1896,” in 500 Best-Loved Song Lyrics, comp. and ed. Roland Herder (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1998), 336. [Trans.] 11.  “Music, music before all things, / Uneven rhythm suits it well / In air more vague and soluble / With nothing there that weighs or clings.” Paul Verlaine, “Art poétique,” in Selected Verse: A Bilingual Edition, trans. and ed. Doris-Jeanne Gourévitch (Waltham, MA: Blaisdell Publishing, 1970), 136–137. [Trans.] 12.  Ibid. [Trans.] 13.  Note that I fabricated this example ad hoc to contain references of different kinds, and I would not swear to its reliability or concep- tual clarity. Also note that, for reasons of simplicity, I have limited the bibliography to the essential data, neglecting the requirements of accuracy and completeness listed in section 3.2.3. And finally, what we define as a standard bibliography in table 5.3 can take vari- ous forms, depending on the citation style you adopt. 14.  The French writer François-Marie Arouet is better known by his pen name Voltaire. [Trans.] Chapter 6 1.  Despite the cleverness of the following system, it is rarely used by contemporary English writers. [Trans.]