PERIOD FURNITURE

A Harvard undergraduate who wants a comprehensive knowledge of either medieval or modern European history will find that he has to take an almost impossible number of courses. The reason is that after History 1 the courses nearly all split up into vertical histories of nations. Exceptions are spotted intellectual histories, a course on the Rennaissance and Reformation, and Professor Langer's History of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.

To delve any deeper into medieval Europe than History 1, a student must take Professor Taylor's Intellectual History plus four separate courses on England, France, Italy, and Germany. Professor Taylor not only admits this, but also protests that his students of medieval France, in answering the Divisional Exam questions, approach the general field of medieval Europe through France alone. They have no time to specialize in more than one country, and therefore have no basis for comparison.

The modern European field presents an even more ridiculous outlay. A student seeking a horizontal picture of the period from 1453 to the present must contemplate wading through seven full and seven half courses. To cover French history alone, he needs three separate half courses from Professor McKay, Professor Brinton and Dr. Gilmore. There has been no comparative general course on the modern period since Professor Lord, who covered Europe from 1450 to 1789, vacated his chair to become a priest.

Taylor and Brinton, Chairmen of the Division and the Department respectively, both proclaim the need for general courses in medieval and modern history. These would not be so elementary as a Freshman course, nor so comprehensive as a graduate course, but they would cut across national boundaries and offer a comparative picture of whole periods. They would allow the student to trace the main cultural, political, and intellectual developments of these two periods, and specialize on any one country from that broad base. He would have to spend far less tutorial time plugging up gaps in his coverage, and would find himself free to do more work on historical interpretation and original research into history's whys and wherefores.