Hi Schmedlap,
I'm reading Maurice de Saxe's Reveries on the Art of War right now (thanks KenOriginally Posted by Schmedlap
), and one of the things that is helping get a handle on it is knowing a fair bit about the music at the time - both the great stuff (e.g. Bach) and some of the hack work.
Guided study can be useful, but it is always important to remember that in such a setting you are being "guided" by someone else's view of what is important. It is a fascinating paradox in that it really helps to have expert guidance in getting a rough picture together, but that picture then limits what you can see. I ran head on into this years ago, and one of my truly great prof's suggested a couple of tactics that I have used ever since then.
First, read a general overview of the area and look for the main names, events, dates, etc. This helps you build a rough picture (sort of like the outlines in a colouring book). Having done that, put the overview away and read the original works - not what someone else abstracts from them. And, BTW, when I say "read", I mean read each work three times - a quick overview, a close read with notes, and then a final time to catch the nuances.
Second, when you are reading the original works (in the original language if possible), ask who they are drawing on. Most texts are part of a much larger universe of discourse (including a lot of dead people
Third, try and invert some of the authors axiomatic assumptions and see if you react the same way to what they are saying. I'll admit it can be tricky finding a good axiomatic assumption to invert, but it will usually be something that they don't talk about - in the case of social theory, I used to (and still do) invert the assumption of reincarnation (I assume it's real).
Okay, it's time consuming. It does, however, let you start to pull out principles and boundary conditions for those principles.
Cheers,
Marc
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