ABSTRACT
There are many open questions in the humanities: whether the poems of Homer were written by one person, two or many; whether the works of John Cage can properly be called music and those of Jackson Pollock art; whether it was Richard III, Henry VII or someone else who was responsible for the death of the last legitimate Yorkist heir to the throne of England. I suppose that there have been people who were attracted to the study of the humanities by the hope of solving these and similar questions. I doubt that there have been many. Most of us who study and teach the humanities do so from a fascination-perhaps love, perhaps curiosity, perhaps even hate1-of the works, the people and the periods that we study, and our interest in the subject is not dependent upon its further development by research.2 A student generally falls in love with
Homer, conflict. We would rather be Homer than Wilamowitz, rather Beethoven than any of his biographers. Why, then, do most of us spend a good deal of our lives researching the humanities rather than simply enjoying and sharing them?
